I 


1   W  W    i   1    Jjj  iSlil  HHflRHH 


MOLE 


I 


PIP 


,RT  CAN  NAN 


OLD    MOLE 


OLD    MOLE 

BEING  THE  SURPRISING  ADVEN- 
TURES IN  ENGLAND  OF  HERBERT 
JOCELYN  BEENHAM,  M.A.,  SOME- 
TIME SIXTH- FORM  MASTER  AT 
THRIGSBY  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL  IN 
THE    COUNTY   OF    LANCASTER 


BY 

GILBERT  CANNAN 

AUTHOR  OF  "ROUND  THE  CORNER'! 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 

1917 


30^17/ 


Copyright,  1914.  by 
D.  APPLETON  AND   COMPANY 


TO 
MY    WIFE 


?;91970 


Palme  les  fables  des  philosophes>  je  ris 
de  celles  des  enfants,  et  je  hals  celles 
des  imposteurs. 

L'  Ingenu- 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  PRELUDE  3 

II.  MARRIAGE  99 

III.  INTERLUDE  147 

IV.  TOYS  171 
V.  IN  THE  SWIM  203 

VI.  OUT  OF  IT  289 

VII.  APPENDIX  347 


I 

PRELUDE 

His  star  is  a  strange  one!  One  that  leadeth 
him  to  fortune  by  the  path  of  frowns!  to 
greatness  by  the  aid  of  thivac kings ! 

THE  SHAVING  OF  SHAGPAT 


.   .     . 


• 


PRELUDE 

A  SENSITIVE  observer,  who  once  spent  a  week 
in  theatrical  lodgings  in  Thrigsby,  has  de- 
scribed the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  place 
as  uharsh  listlessness  shot  with  humor."  That  is 
about  as  far  as  you  can  get  in  a  week.  It  is  farther 
than  Herbert  Jocelyn  Beenham,  M.A.  (Oxon.),  got 
in  the  twenty-five  years  he  had  given  to  the  instruc- 
tion of  the  youth  of  Thrigsby  in  its  Grammar  School 
— the  foundation  of  an  Elizabethan  bishop.  Am- 
bition ever  leads  a  man  away  from  Thrigsby.  Hav- 
ing none,  H.  J.  Beenham  had  stayed  there,  achieving 
the  sort  of  distinction  that  swelled  Tennyson's  brook. 
Boys  and  masters  came  and  went,  but  "Old  Mole" 
still  occupied  the  Sixth  Form  room  in  the  gallery 
above  the  glass  roof  of  the  gymnasium. 

He  was  called  Old  Mole  because  whenever  he 
spied  a  boy  cribbing,  or  larking,  or  reading  a  book 
that  had  no  reference  to  the  subject  in  hand,  or  eat- 
ing sweets,  or  passing  notes,  he  would  cry  out  in  a 
voice  of  thunder :  "Ha !  Art  thou  there,  old  mole  ?" 
Thrigsbian  fathers  who  had  suffered  at  his  hands 
would  ask  their  sons  about  Old  Mole,  and  so  his 
position  was  fortified  by  a  sort  of  veneration.     He 

3 


OLD   MOLE 

was  one  of  those  men  who  assume  their  definite  shape 
arid -appearance:  in  the  early  thirties,  and  thereafter 
give:  no  clew;  to  their  age  even  to  the  most  curious 
spinster's  inqursitiveness.  Reference  to  the  Calen- 
dar of  his  university  shows  that  at  the  time  of  his 
catastrophe  he  cannot  have  been  more  than  forty- 
eight. 

He  was  unmarried,  not  because  he  disliked 
women,  but  from  indolence,  obstinacy,  combative- 
ness,  and  a  coarse  strain  in  him  which  made  him  re- 
gard the  female  body,  attire  and  voice  as  rather 
ridiculous.  With  married  women  he  was  ceremoni- 
ous and  polite:  with  the  unmarried  he  was  banter- 
ing. When  he  had  been  twenty  years  at  the  school 
he  began  jocularly  to  speak  of  it  as  his  bride,  and 
when  he  came  to  his  twenty-fifth  year  he  regarded  it 
as  his  silver  wedding.  He  was  very  proud  when  his 
Form  presented  him  with  a  smoker's  cabinet  and 
his  colleagues  subscribed  for  a  complete  edition  of 
the  works  of  Voltaire  bound  in  vellum.  Best  of  all 
was  the  fact  that  one  of  his  boys,  A.  Z.  Panoukian, 
an  Armenian  of  the  second  generation  (and  there- 
fore a  thorough  Thrigsbian),  had  won  a  scholarship 
at  Balliol,  the  first  since  he  had  had  charge  of  the 
Sixth.  At  Speech  Day,  when  the  whole  school  and 
their  female  relatives  and  the  male  parents  of  the 
prize-winners  were  gathered  in  the  John  Bright 
Hall,  the  Head  Master  would  make  a  special  refer- 
ence to  Panoukian  and  possibly  to  the  happy  coinci- 
dence of  his  performance  with  the  attainment  of 
Mr.  Beenham's  fourth  of  a  century  in  the  service  of 


PRELUDE 

the  pious  and  ancient  foundation.  It  was  possible, 
but  unlikely,  for  the  Head  Master  was  a  sentimen- 
talist who  made  a  point  of  presenting  an  arid  front 
to  the  world  lest  his  dignity  should  be  undermined. 

It  was  with  a  glow  of  satisfaction  that  H.  J.  Been- 
ham  took  out  his  master's  hood  and  his  best  mortar- 
board on  the  eve  of  Speech  Day  and  laid  them  out 
in  his  bedroom.  This  was  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon,  for  he  had  promised  to  spend  the  evening 
with  the  Panoukian  family  at  Bungsall,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  city.  It  was  a  heavy  July  day  and  he 
was  rather  tired,  for  he  had  spent  the  morning  in 
school  reading  aloud  from  the  prose  works  of  Emer- 
son, and  the  afternoon  had  been  free,  owing  to  the 
necessity  of  a  replay  of  the  Final  in  the  inter-Form 
cricket  championship  between  his  boys  and  the  Mod- 
ern Transitus.  He  had  intended  to  illuminate  the 
event  with  his  presence,  but  Thrigsby  in  July  is  not 
pleasant,  and  so  he  had  come  out  by  an  early  train 
to  his  house  at  Bigley  in  the  hills  which  overflow 
Derbyshire  into  Cheshire. 

He  sat  with  a  glow  of  satisfaction  as  he  gazed  at 
his  hood  and  mortar-board  and  thought  of  Panou- 
kian. He  was  pleased  with  Panoukian.  He  had 
"spotted"  him  in  the  Lower  Third  and  rushed  him 
up  in  two  and  a  half  years  to  the  Sixth.  There  had 
been  an  anxious  three  years  during  which  Panoukian 
had  slacked,  and  taken  to  smoking,  and  been  caught 
in  a  cafe  flirting  (in  a  school  cap)  with  a  waitress, 
and  had  been  content  with  the  superficial  ease  and 
brilliance  with  which  he  had  mastered  the  Greek 


OLD    MOLE 

and  Latin  classics  and  the  rudiments  of  philosophy. 
There  had  been  a  devastating  term  when  Panoukian 
had  taken  to  writing  poetry,  and  then  things  had 
gone  from  bad  to  worse  until  he  (Beenham)  had 
lighted  on  the  truth  that  Panoukian  was  stale  and 
needed  a  fresh  point  of  attack.  Then  he  had  Pan- 
oukian to  stay  with  him  at  Bigley  and  turned  him 
loose  in  French  literature  and,  as  a  side  issue,  intro- 
duced him  to  Eckermann's  version  of  Goethe's  con- 
versation. The  boy  was  most  keenly  responsive  to 
literature,  and  through  these  outside  studies  it  had 
been  possible  to  lead  him  back  to  the  realization  that 
Homer,  Thucydides,  Plato,  Virgil  and  company  had 
also  produced  literature  and  that  their  works  had 
only  been  masquerading  as  text-books.  .  .  .  The 
fight  was  won,  and  F.  J.  Tibster  of  Balliol  had  writ- 
ten a  most  gratifying  letter  of  commendation  of 
Panoukian's  performance  in  the  examination.  This 
had  yielded  the  greatest  satisfaction  to  Panoukian 
pere,  and  he  had  twice  given  Mr.  Beenham  lunch 
in  the  most  expensive  restaurant  of  Thrigsby's  new 
mammoth  hotel,  and  now,  when  Panoukian  fits  was 
to  leave  the  wing  of  his  preceptor,  had  bidden  him 
to  meet  Mrs.  Panoukian — an  Irishwoman — and  all 
the  Miss  Panoukians.  The  railway  journey  from 
Bigley  would  be  hot  and  unpleasant,  and  to  reach 
Bungsall  it  was  necessary  to  pass  through  some  of 
the  most  stifling  streets  in  Thrigsby.  After  the  ex- 
haustion of  the  summer  term  and  the  examinations 
the  schoolmaster  found  it  hard  to  conquer  his  re- 
luctance.    Only  by  thinking  of  the  cool  stream  in 

6 


PRELUDE 

the  Highlands  to  which  it  was  his  habit  to  fly  on  the 
day  after  Speech  Day  could  he  stiffen  himself  to  the 
effort  of  donning  his  dress  clothes.  (The  Panou- 
kians  dressed  in  the  evening  since  their  Arthur  had 
been  embraced  by  Balliol  and  taken  to  the  bosom 
of  the  Lady  Dervorguilla.)  He  had  a  cold  bath, 
and  more  than  ever  clearly  he  thought  of  the  brown 
water  of  the  burn  foaming  into  white  and  creamy 
flecks  over  the  rocks.  How  thoroughly,  he  thought, 
he  had  this  year  earned  his  weeks  of  peace  and  soli- 
tude. 

He  would  catch  the  six-twenty-four.  He  had 
plenty  of  time  and  there  would  be  a  good  margin 
in  Thrigsby.  He  could  look  in  at  the  Foreign  Li- 
brary, of  which  he  was  president,  and  give  them  his 
new  selection  of  books  to  be  purchased  during  the 
vacation.  On  the  way  he  met  Barnett,  the  captain 
of  the  Bigley  Golf  Club,  and  stayed  to  argue  with 
him  about  the  alterations  to  the  fourteenth  green, 
which  he  considered  scandalous  and  incompetent. 
He  told  Barnett  so  with  such  heat  and  at  such  length 
that  he  only  just  caught  the  six- twenty- four  and  had 
to  leap  into  a  third-class  carriage.  It  was  empty. 
He  opened  the  windows  and  lay  at  full  length  on 
the  seat  facing  the  engine.  It  was  more  hot  and 
unpleasant  than  he  had  anticipated.  He  cursed  Bar- 
nett and  extended  the  malediction  to  Panoukian.  It 
would  have  been  more  pleasant  to  spend  the  even- 
ing with  Miss  Clipton,  sister  and  formerly  house- 
keeper to  a  deceased  bishop  of  Thrigsby,  talking 
about  her  vegetable  marrows.  .  .  .     Uncommonly 

7 


OLD   MOLE 

hot.    Deucedly  hot.    The  train  crawled  so  that  the 
was  no  draught.    He  went  to  sleep. 

He  was  awakened  by  the  roar  of  the  wheels  cros 
ing  Ockley  viaduct.  Ockley  sprawls  up  and  dov 
the  steep  sides  of  a  valley.  At  the  bottom  runs 
black  river.  Tall  chimneys  rise  from  the  hillside 
From  the  viaduct  you  gaze  down  into  thousands  < 
chimneys  trailing  black  smoke.  The  smoke  rises  ar 
curls  and  writhes  upward  into  the  black  pall  th 
ever  hangs  over  Ockley.  This  pall  was  gold  ai 
red  and  apricot  yellow  with  the  light  of  the  si 
behind  it.  There  were  folk  at  Bigley  who  said  the 
was  beauty  in  Ockley.  ...  It  was  a  freque 
source  of  after-dinner  argument  in  Bigley.  Beaut 
For  H.  J.  Beenham  all  beauty  lived  away  fro 
Thrigsby  and  its  environment.  Smoke  and  beau 
were  incompatible.  Still,  in  his  half-sleeping,  hal 
waking  condition  there  was  something  impressive 
Ockley's  golden  pall.  He  raised  himself  on  h 
elbow  the  better  to  look  out,  when  he  was  shock< 
and  startled  by  hearing  a  sort  of  whimper.  Opp 
site  him,  in  the  corner,  was  sitting  a  girl,  a  vei 
pretty  girl,  with  a  white,  drawn  face  and  her  han< 
pressed  together,  her  shoulders  huddled  and  her  fa> 
averted.  Her  eyes  were  blank  and  expressionles 
and  there  was  a  great  tear  trickling  down  her  nos 
The  light  from  the  golden  pall  glowed  over  her  fac 
but  seemed  only  to  accentuate  its  misery  and  tl 
utter  dejection  of  her  attitude. 

"Poor  girl!"  thought  the  schoolmaster.     "Poo 
poor  girl!"     He  felt  a  warm,  melting  sensation  i 

8 


PRELUDE 

the  neighborhood  of  his  breastbone;  and  with  an 
impulsiveness  altogether  unusual  to  him  he  leaned 
forward  and  tried  to  lay  his  hand  on  her.  He  was 
still  only  half  awake  and  was  wholly  under  the  im- 
pulse to  bring  comfort  to  one  so  wretched.  The 
train  lurched  as  it  passed  over  a  point,  and,  in- 
stead of  her  hand,  he  grasped  her  knee.  At  once 
she  sprang  forward  and  slapped  his  face.  Stung, 
indignant,  shocked,  but  still  dominated  by  his  im- 
pulse, urged  by  it  to  insist  on  its  expression,  he 
seized  her  by  the  wrists  and  tried  to  force  her  back 
into  her  seat  and  began  to  address  her: 

"My  poor  child!  Something  in  you,  in  your  eyes, 
has  touched  me.  I  do  not  know  if  I  can.  .  .  . 
Please  sit  down  and  listen  to  me." 

"Nasty  old  beast !"  said  the  girl. 

"I  must  protest,"  replied  Old  Mole,  "the  inno- 
cence of  my  motives."  He  still  gripped  her  by  the 
wrists.    "Seeing  you  as  I  did,  so  unnerved,  so " 

The  train  slowed  down  and  stopped,  but  he  did 
not  notice  it.  He  was  absolutely  absorbed  in  his 
purpose — to  succor  this  young  woman  in  distress  and 
to  show  her  the  injustice  of  her  suspicions.  She 
by  this  time  was  almost  beside  herself  with  anger 
and  fright,  and  she  had  struggled  so  violently — for 
he  had  no  notion  of  the  force  with  which  he  held 
her — that  her  hair  had  tumbled  down  behind  and 
she  had  torn  the  seam  of  her  sleeve  and  put  her  foot 
through  a  flounce  in  her  petticoat. 

He  was  thoroughly  roused  now,  and  shouted: 

"You  shall  listen  to  me " 


OLD   MOLE 

"Let  me  go !    Let  me  go !"  screamed  the  girl. 

The  train  had  stopped  oppos:te  a  train  going  in 
the  other  direction.  The  door  of  the  compartment 
was  opened  suddenly,  and  Beenham  found  himself 
picked  up  and  flung  into  the  far  corner.  Over  him 
towered  an  immense  form  clad  in  parson's  clothes — 
the  very  type  of  vengeful  muscular  Christianity. 

In  the  corner  the  girl  had  subsided  into  hysterical 
sobs.    The  parson  questioned  her. 
'Do  you  know  this  man?" 

'No  ...  no,  sir." 


"] 

"Never  seen  him  before?" 


"Never,  sir.    He — he  set  on  me." 

"Do  you  prefer  a  charge  against  him?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

Beenham  could  hardly  hear  what  they  said,  but 
he  was  boiling  with  indignation. 

"I  protest "  he  said. 

"Silence!"  shouted  the  parson.  "But  for  my 
timely  intervention  Heaven  knows  what  would  have 
happened.  .  .  .  Silence!  You  and  men  like  you 
are  a  pest  to  society,  impervious  to  decency  and  the 
call  of  religion.  .  .  .  Fortunately  there  is  law  in 
the  country  and  you  shall  know  it." 

With  that  he  pulled  down  the  chain  above  the 
windows.  In  a  moment  or  two  the  scowling  guard 
appeared.  The  parson  described  the  horrible  scene 
he  had  witnessed  from  the  train,  that  was  even  now 
moving  Londonward,  his  interference,  and  declared 
his  intention  of  seeing  that  the  perpetrator  of  so  vile 
a  deed  should  be  hounded  down.    He  requested  the 

10 


PRELUDE 

guard  to  telephone  at  the  next  station  to  the 
Thrigsby  police.  A  small  crowd  had  collected. 
They  hummed  and  buzzed  with  excitement,  and 
fifteen  men  clambered  into  the  compartment  to  assist 
the  parson  in  his  heroic  defence  of  the  young  woman 
against  the  now  fully  awake  and  furious  pedagogue. 
He  tried  to  speak,  but  was  shouted  down :  to  move 
toward  the  parson,  but  was  thrust  back  into  his  cor- 
ner. Every  one  else  had  a  perfectly  clear-cut  idea 
of  what  had  happened.  He  himself  was  so  busy 
emerging  from  his  state  of  hallucination  and  trying 
to  trace  back  step  by  step  everything  that  had  hap- 
pened to  produce  the  extraordinary  eruption  into 
what  had  been  at  Bigley  an  empty,  ordinary,  rather 
stuffy  compartment  in  a  railway  train,  that  he  could 
not  even  begin  to  contemplate  the  consequences  or 
to  think,  rather,  what  they  might  all  be  moving 
toward.  It  was  only  as  the  train  ran  into  Thrigsby, 
and  he  saw  the  name,  that  he  associated  it  with  that 
other  word  which  had  been  on  the  parson's  lips: 

"Police I" 

There  was  a  cold  sinking  in  the  pit  of  his  stomach. 
Out  of  his  hallucination  came  the  remembrance  that 
he  had,  with  the  most  kindly  and  generous  and 
spontaneously  humane  motives,  used  the  girl  with 
violence. — Police!  He  was  given  no  time  for 
thought.  There  was  a  policeman  on  the  platform. 
A  crowd  gathered.  It  absorbed  Beenham,  thrust 
him  toward  the  policeman,  who  seized  him  by  the 
arm  and,  followed  by  the  parson  and  the  girl,  they 
swept  swiftly  along  the  platform,  down  the  familiar 

II 


OLD   MOLE 

incline,  the  crowd  swelling  as  they  went,  along  an 
unknown  street,  squalid  and  vibrant  with  the  din  of 
iron-shod  wheels  over  stone  setts,  to  the  police  sta- 
tion. There  a  shabby  swing  door  cut  off  the  crowd, 
and  Beenham,  parson,  girl  and  policeman  stood  in 
the  charge  room  waiting  for  the  officer  at  the  desk 
to  look  up  from  his  ledger. 

The  charge  was  made  and  entered.  The  girl's 
name  was  Matilda  Burn,  a  domestic  servant.  She 
was  prompted  by  the  parson,  who  swept  aside  her 
reluctance  to  speak.  Old  Mole  was  asked  to  give 
his  name,  address  and  occupation.  He  burst  into  a 
passionate  flow  of  words,  but  was  interrupted  and 
coldly  reminded  that  he  was  only  desired  to  give 
bare  information  on  three  points,  and  that  anything 
he  might  say  would  be  used  against  him  in  evidence. 
He  explained  his  identity,  and  the  officer  at  the  led- 
ger looked  startled,  but  entered  the  particulars  in 
slow  writing  with  a  scratchy  pen.  The  parson  and 
the  girl  disappeared.  The  officer  at  the  ledger 
cleared  his  throat,  turned  to  the  accused,  opened  his 
mouth,  but  did  not  speak.  He  scratched  his  ear  with 
his  pen,  stooped  and  blew  a  fly  off  the  page  in  front 
of  him,  made  a  visible  effort  to  suppress  his  human- 
ity and  conduct  the  affair  in  accordance  with  official 
routine,  and  finally  blurted  out : 

"Do  you  want  bail?" 

Old  Mole  gave  the  name  and  address  of  his  Head 
Master. 

"You  can  write  if  you  like." 

The  letter  was  written,  read  by  the  officer,  and 

12 


PRELUDE 

despatched.  There  was  a  whispered  consultation  be- 
hind the  ledger,  during  which  the  unhappy  school- 
master read  through  again  and  again  a  list  of  articles 
and  dogs  missing,  and  then  he  was  led  to  the  inspec- 
tor's room  and  given  a  newspaper  to  read. 

"Extraordinary!"  he  said  to  himself.  Then  he 
thought  of  the  Panoukians  and  began  to  fidget  at  the 
idea  of  being  late.  He  abominated  unpunctuality. 
Had  he  not  again  and  again  had  to  punish  young 
Panoukian  for  indulgence  in  the  vice?  The  six- 
twenty-four  had  given  him  ample  time.  He  pulled 
out  his  watch :  Still  twenty-five  minutes,  but  he  must 
hurry.  He  looked  round  the  bare,  dingy  room 
vaguely,  wonderingly.  Incisively  the  idea  of  his 
situation  bit  into  his  brain.  He  was  in  custody — 
career,  a  prison.  How  absurd  it  was,  rather  funny ! 
It  only  needed  a  little  quiet,  level-headed  explana- 
tion and  he  would  be  free.  The  "chief"  would  con- 
firm his  story,  his  identity.  .  .  .  They  would  laugh 
over  it.  Very  funny:  very  funny.  A  wonderful 
story  for  the  club.  He  chuckled  over  it  to  himself 
until  he  began  to  think  of  the  outcome.  More  than 
once  he  had  served  on  a  Grand  Jury  and  had  slept 
through  the  consideration  of  hundreds  of  indict- 
ments :  a  depressing  experience  for  which  the  judge 
had  rewarded  him  with  nothing  but  compliments 
and  an  offer  of  a  pass  to  view  His  Majesty's  prison. 
That  brought  him  up  with  a  jerk.  He  was  in  cus- 
tody, charged  with  a  most  serious  offence,  for  which 
he  would  be  tried  at  the  Assizes.  It  was  monstrous, 
preposterous !    It  must  be  stopped  at  once.    What  a 

13 


OLD   MOLE 

grotesque  mistake!  What  an  egregious,  yet 
what  a  serious  blunder!  That  officious  idiot  of  a 
parson ! 

The  Head  Master  arrived.  He  glowered  at  his 
colleague  and  seemed  very  agitated.    He  said: 

"This  is  very  serious,  most  unfortunate.  It  is — 
ah — as  well  for  the  prestige  of  the  school  that  it 
has  happened  at  the  end  of  term.  We  must  hush 
it  up,  hush  it  up." 

Beenham  explained.  He  told  the  whole  story, 
growing  more  and  more  amazed  and  indignant  as 
he  set  it  forth.    The  Head  Master  only  said: 

"I  form  no  opinion.  We  must  hush  it  up.  It 
must  be  kept  out  of  the  papers." 

Not  a  word  more  could  be  wrung  from  him. 
With  a  stiff  back  and  pursed  lips  he  nodded  and 
went  away.    He  returned  to  say: 

"Of  course  you  will  not  appear  at  Speech  Day.  I 
will  write  to  you  as  soon  as  I  have  decided  what  had 
best  be  done." 

"I  shall  be  at  Bigley,"  said  Old  Mole. 

He  was  released  on  bail  and  told  to  surrender 
himself  at  the  police  court  when  called  upon. 

In  a  dream  he  wandered  out  into  the  street  and 
up  into  the  main  thoroughfare,  along  which  every 
day  in  term  time  he  walked  between  the  station  and 
the  school.  Impossible  to  go  to  the  Panoukians; 
impossible  to  return  to  Bigley.  Suppose  he  had  been 
recognized!  Any  number  of  his  acquaintances 
might  be  going  out  by  the  six-forty-nine.  He  must 
have  been  seen!  Bigley  would  be  alive  with  it!  .  .  . 

-1.4 


PRELUDE 

He  sent  two  telegrams,  one  to  the  Panoukians,  the 
other  to  his  housekeeper  to  announce  that  he  would 
not  be  back  that  night. 

He  forgot  to  eat,  and  roamed  through  the  streets 
of  Thrigsby,  finding  relief  from  the  strain  of  his 
fear  and  his  tormented  thoughts  in  observation. 
Dimly,  hardly  at  all  consciously,  he  began  to  per- 
ceive countless  existences  all  apparently  indifferent 
to  his  own.  Little  boys  jeered  at  him  occasionally, 
but  the  men  and  women  took  no  notice  of  him. 
Streets  of  warehouses  he  passed  through,  streets  of 
little  blackened  houses,  under  railway  arches,  under 
tall  chimneys,  past  shops  and  theaters  and  music- 
halls,  and  waste  grounds,  and  grounds  covered  with 
scaffolding  and  fenced  in  with  pictured  hoardings: 
an  immense  energy,  the  center  of  which  was,  sur- 
prisingly, not  the  school.  He  walked  and  thought 
and  observed  until  he  sank  into  exhaustion  and  con- 
fusion. In  the  evening,  when  the  lamps  were  lit, 
the  main  streets  were  thronged  with  men  and  women 
idly  strolling,  for  it  was  too  hot  for  purpose  or  de- 
liberate amusement. 

Late,  about  eleven  o'clock,  he  walked  into  his  club. 
The  porter  saluted.  In  the  smoke  room  two  or  three 
of  his  acquaintances  nodded.  No  one  spoke  to  him. 
In  a  corner  was  a  little  group  who  kept  looking  in 
his  direction,  so  that  after  a  time  he  began  to  feel 
that  they  were  talking  about  him.  He  became 
acutely  conscious  of  his  position.  There  were  mut- 
tering and  whispering  in  the  corner,  and  then  one 
man,  a  tall,  pale-faced  man,  whom  he  had  known 

x5 


OLD    MOLE 

slightly  for  many  years,  arose  from  the  group  and 
came  heavily  toward  him. 

"I  want  to  speak  to  you  a  moment,"  said  the  man. 

"Certainly.     Certainly." 

They  went  outside. 

"Er — of  course,"  said  the  man,  "we  are  awfully 
sorry,  but  we  can't  help  feeling  that  it  was  a  mis- 
take for  you  to  come  here  to-night.  You  must  give 
us  time,  you  know." 

Beenham  looked  the  man  up  and  down. 

"Time  for  what?"  he  replied  acidly. 

"To  put  it  bluntly,"  came  the  answer,  "Harbutt 
says  he  won't  stay  in  the  club  if  you  stay." 

Beenham  turned  on  his  heel  and  went  downstairs. 
At  the  door  he  met  the  Head  Master  coming  in, 
who  sourly  expressed  pleasure  in  the  meeting. 

"I  shall  never  enter  the  club  again,"  said  Been- 
ham. 

The  Head  Master  paid  no  attention  to  the  re- 
mark, took  him  by  the  arm  and  led  him  into  the 
street.  There  they  paced  up  and  down  while  it  was 
explained  that  the  Chief  Constable  had  been  ap- 
proached and  was  willing  to  suspend  proceedings 
until  a  full  inquiry  had  been  made,  if  Beenham  were 
willing  to  face  an  inquiry;  or,  in  the  alternative, 
would  allow  him  twenty-four  hours  in  which  to  dis- 
appear from  Thrigsby.  The  Lord  Mayor  and  three 
other  governors  of  the  school  had  been  seen,  and 
they  were  all  agreed  that  such  an  end  to  Mr.  Been- 
ham's  long  and  honorable  connection  with  the  foun- 
dation was  deplorable. 

16 


PRELUDE 

"End!"  gasped  Beenham. 

"The  governors  all  expressed "  began  the 

Head  Master,  when  his  colleague  interrupted  him 
with: 

"What  is  your  own  opinion?" 

"I— I " 

"What  is  your  own  feeling?" 

"I  am  thinking  of  the  school." 

"Then  I  am  to  suffer  under  an  unjust  and  un- 
founded accusation?" 

"The  school " 

"Ach! " 

Impossible  to  describe  the  wonderful  guttural 
sound  that  the  unhappy  man  wrenched  out  of  him- 
self. He  stood  still  and  his  brain  began  to  work 
very  clearly  and  he  saw  that  the  scandal  had  already 
begun  to  move  so  that  if  he  accepted  either  of  his 
chief's  alternatives  and  had  the  matter  hushed  up, 
or  he  vanished  away  within  twenty-four  Hours,  it 
would  solidify,  crystallize  into  conical  form,  descend 
and  extinguish  them.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  in- 
sisted on  a  public  inquiry,  there  would  be  a  confla- 
gration in  which,  though  he  might  leave  the  court 
without  a  stain  on  his  reputation — was  not  that  the 
formula? — yet  his  worldly  position  would  be  con- 
sumed with  possible  damage  to  the  institution  to 
which  he  had  given  so  many  years  of  his  life.  His 
first  impulse  was  to  save  his  honor  without  regard 
to  the  cost  or  damage  to  others:  but  then  he  re- 
membered the  attitude  of  the  men  in  the  club, 
fathers  of   families  with  God  knows  what  other 

17 


OLD    MOLE 

claims  to  righteousness,  and  he  saw  that,  though  he 
might  be  innocent  as  a  lamb,  yet  he  had  to  face  pub- 
lic opinion  excited  by  prejudice,  which,  if  he  dared 
to  combat  it,  he  would  only  have  enflamed.  He 
was  not  fully  aware  of  the  crisis  to  which  he  had 
come,  but  his  emotion  at  the  idea  of  severing  his 
connection  with  the  place  that  had  been  the  central 
point  of  his  existence  spurred  him  to  an  instinctive 
effort  in  which  he  began  to  perceive  larger  vistas  of 
life.  Against  them  as  background  everything  that 
was  and  had  been  was  reduced  in  size  so  that  he 
could  see  it  clearly  and  bioscopically.  He  knew, 
too,  that  he  was  seeing  it  differently  from  the  Head 
Master,  from  Harbutt,  from  all  the  other  men  who 
would  shrink  away  from  the  supposedly  contagious 
danger  of  his  situation,  and  he  admitted  his  own 
helplessness.  With  that  his  immediate  indignation 
at  the  conduct  of  individuals  died  away  and  he  was 
left  with  an  almost  hysterical  sense  of  the  prepos- 
terousness  of  the  world  in  which  out  of  nothing,  a 
misconstruction,  a  whole  mental  fabric  could  be 
builded  beneath  the  weight  of  which  a  normal,  or- 
dinary, respectable,  hard-working,  conscientious  man 
could  be  crushed.  And  yet  he  did  not  feel  at  all 
crushed,  but  only  rather  excited  and  uplifted  with, 
from  some  mysterious  source,  a  new  accretion  of 
strength. 

"I  see  the  force  of  your  argument,"  he  said  to 
his  chief.  "I  see  the  inevitability  of  the  course  you 
have  taken.  The  story,  even  with  my  innocence,  is 
too  amusing  for  the  dignity  of  an  ancient  foundation 

18 


PRELUDE 

and  our  honorable  profession  of  pedagogy." — He 
enjoyed  this  use  of  rhetoric  as  a  relief  to  his  feel- 
ings, for  he  was  torn  between  tragedy  and  comedy, 
tears  and  laughter — "To  oblige  the  Lord  Mayor, 
the  governors,  and  yourself,  I  will  accept  the  gen- 
erous offer  of  the  Chief  Constable.  Good-bye.  I 
hope  you  will  not  forget  to  mention  Panoukian  to- 
morrow." 

The  Head  Master  pondered  this  for  some  mo- 
ments and  then  held  out  his  hand.  Old  Mole  looked 
through  him  and  walked  on.  He  had  not  gone 
twenty  yards  when  he  began  to  chuckle,  to  gulp,  to 
blink,  and  then  to  laugh.  He  laughed  out  loud, 
went  on  laughing,  thumped  in  the  air  with  his 
fist.  Suddenly  the  laughter  died  in  him  and  he 
thought : 

"Twenty-five  years !  That's  a  large  slice  out  of  a 
man's  life.  Ended — in  what?  Begun — in  what? 
To  show — what  is  there?  Ended  in  one  sleepy, 
generous  impulse  leading  to  disaster.  Twenty-five 
years,  slumbered  away,  in  an  ancient  and  honorable 
profession,  in  teaching  awkward,  conceited,  and,  for 
the  most  part,  grubby  little  boys  things  which  they 
looked  forward  to  forgetting  as  soon  as  they  passed 
out  into  the  world."  And  he  had  taken  pride  in  it, 
pride  in  a  possession  which  chance  and  the  muddle- 
headed  excitability  of  men  could  in  a  short  space  of 
time  demolish,  pride  in  the  thought  that  he  was  half 
remembered  by  some  hundreds  of  the  citizens  of 
that  huge,  roaring  city  from  whose  turmoil  and 
gross  energy  he  had  lived  secluded.     He  looked 

?9 


OLD    MOLE 

back,  and  the  years  stretched  before  him  tranquil 
and  monotonous  and  foolish.  He  totted  up  the 
amount  of  money  that  he  had  drawn  out  of  Thrigsby 
during  those  years  and  set  against  it  what  he  had 
given — the  use  of  himself,  the  unintelligent,  me- 
chanical use  of  himself.  He  turned  from  this  un- 
pleasant contemplation  to  the  future.  That  was  even 
more  appalling.  Within  twenty-four  hours  he  had 
to  perform  the  definite  act  of  disappearing  from  the 
scene.  Beyond  that  lay  nothing.  To  what  place  in 
the  world  could  he  disappear?  He  had  one  brother, 
a  Chancery  barrister  and  a  pompous  ass.  They 
dined  together  once  a  year  and  quarreled.  .  .  .  His 
only  sister  was  married  to  a  curate,  had  an  enormous 
family  and  small  means.  All  his  relations  lived  in 
a  church  atmosphere — his  father  had  been  a  par- 
son in  Lincolnshire — and  they  distrusted  him  be- 
cause of  his  avowed  love  for  Lucretius  and  Voltaire. 
Certainly  they  would  be  no  sort  of  help  in  time  of 
trouble.  ...  As  for  friends,  he  had  none.  His 
work,  his  days  spent  with  crowds  of  homunculi  had 
given  him  a  taste  for  solitude  and  the  habit  of  it. 
He  had  prided  himself  on  being  a  clubbable  man 
and  he  had  had  many  acquaintances,  but  not,  in  his 
life,  one  single  human  being  to  whom  in  his  distress 
he  wished  to  turn.  He  had  liked  the  crowds  through 
which  he  had  wandered.  They  had  given  him  the 
most  comforting  kind  of  solitude.  He  was  dis- 
tressed now  that  the  streets  were  so  empty;  shops, 
public-houses,  theaters  were  closed.  How  dreary 
the  streets  were!     How  aimless,   haphazard  and 

20 


PRELUDE 

sprawling  was  the  town !    How  aimless,  haphazard 
and  sprawling  his  own  life  in  it  had  been ! 

A  woman  passed  him  and  breathed  a  hurried 
salute.  He  surveyed  her  with  a  detached,  though 
warmly  humorous,  interest.  She  was,  like  himself, 
outcast,  though  she  had  found  her  feet  and  her 
own  way  of  living.  With  the  next  woman  he  shook 
hands.  She  laughed  at  him.  He  raised  his  hat  to 
the  third.  She  stopped  and  stared  at  him,  open- 
mouthed.  As  amazed,  he  stared  at  her.  It  was 
the  young  woman  of  the  train. 

He  could  find  nothing  to  say,  nor  she;  neither 
could  move.  Feeling  the  necessity  of  a  salute,  he 
removed  his  hat,  bowed,  and,  finding  a  direct  ap- 
proach impossible,  shot  off  obliquely  and  absurdly. 

"I  had  once  a  German  colleague  who  was  a  lavish 
and  indiscriminate  patron  of  the  ladies  of  a  certain 
profession.     He  resigned.     I  also  have  resigned.'' 

She  said: 

"I'm  sorry,"  and,  having  found  her  tongue, 
added: 

"Can  you  tell  me  the  way  to  the  Flat  Iron  Mar- 
ket.    My  aunt  won't  take  me  in." 

"Are  you  also  in  disgrace?" 

"Yes,  sir.  I  was  in  service.  It  was  the  young 
master.     I  did  love  him,  I  did  really." 

"You  had  been  dismissed  when  I  met  you  in  the 
train?" 

"Yes,  sir.  They  gave  me  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
to  go,  without  wages,  and  they  are  sending  on  my 
box.    My  aunt  won't  take  me  in." 

21 


OLD   MOLE 

Again  in  her  eyes  was  the  expression  of  helpless- 
ness and  impotence  in  the  face  of  distress  that  had 
so  moved  him,  and  once  again  he  melted.  He  for- 
got his  own  situation  and  was  only  concerned  to  see 
that  she  should  not  come  to  harm  or  be  thrown 
destitute  upon  a  cold,  a  busy,  harsh,  and  indiffer- 
ent world.  Upon  his  inquiry  as  to  the  state  of  her 
purse,  she  told  him  she  had  only  a  shilling,  and  he 
pressed  half  a  sovereign  into  her  hand.  Then  he 
asked  her  why  she  wished  to  find  the  Flat  Iron  Mar- 
ket, and  she  informed  him  she  had  an  uncle,  Mr. 
Copas,  who  was  there.  She  had  only  seen  him  twice, 
but  he  had  been  kind  to  her  mother  when  she  was 
alive,  although  he  was  not  respectable. 

They  were  directed  by  a  policeman,  and  as  they 
walked  Beenham  gave  her  the  story  of  his  experi- 
ence at  the  police  station  and  how  he  had  accepted 
the  Chief  Constable's  ultimatum.  And  he  employed 
the  opportunity  to  complete  his  explanation  of  his 
extraordinary  lapse  from  decorum. 

"You  can  do  silly  things  when  you're  half  awake," 
said  Matilda.     "It's  like  being  in  love,  isn't  it?" 

"I  have  never  been  in  love." 

She  shot  a  quick,  darting  glance  at  him  and  he 
blinked. 

Flat  Iron  Market  is  a  piece  of  waste  land  over 
against  a  railway  arch.  Here  on  Saturdays  and 
holidays  is  held  a  traffic  in  old  metal,  cheap  laces 
and  trinkets,  sweets  and  patent  medicines,  and  in 
one   corner   are    set   up   booths,    merry-go-rounds, 

22 


PRELUDE 

swing  boats,  cocoanut  shies,  and  sometimes  a  penny 
gaff.  In  the  evening,  under  the  flare  and  flicker 
of  naphtha  lamps,  the  place  is  thronged  with  ar- 
tisans and  their  wives  and  little  dirty  wizened  chil- 
dren, and  young  men  and  maidens  seeking  the  ex- 
citement of  each  other's  jostling  neighborhood. 

Now,  as  Beenham  and  Matilda  came  to  it,  it  was 
dark  and  deserted;  the  wooden  houses  were 
shrouded,  and  the  awnings  of  the  little  booths  and 
the  screens  of  the  cocoanut  shies  flapped  in  the  night 
wind.  They  passed  a  caravan  with  a  fat  woman 
and  two  young  men  sitting  on  the  steps,  and  they 
yawped  at  the  sight  of  Beenham's  white  shirtfront. 

"Does  Mr.  Copas  live  in  a  caravan?"  asked  Been- 
ham. 

"It's  the  theayter,"  replied  Matilda. 

Picking  their  way  over  the  shafts  of  carts  and 
empty  wooden  boxes,  they  came  to  a  red  and  gilt 
fronted  building  adorned  with  mirrors  and  knobs 
and  scrolls,  above  the  portico  of  which  was  writ- 
ten: "Copases  Theater  Royal,"  in  large  swollen  let- 
ters. At  either  end  of  this  inscription  was  a  por- 
trait, one  of  Mrs.  Siddons  in  tragedy,  the  other  of 
J.  L.  Toole  in  comedy.  Toole  had  been  only  re- 
cently painted  and  had  been  given  bright  red  hair. 
Mrs.  Siddons,  but  for  her  label,  would  only  have 
been  recognizable  by  her  nose. 

In  front  of  this  erection  was  a  narrow  platform, 
on  which  stood  a  small  automatic  musical  machine 
surmounted  with  tubular  bells  played  by  two  little 
wooden  figures,  a  man  and  a  woman  in  Tyrolian 

*3 


OLD   MOLE 

costume,  who  moved  along  a  semi-circulat  cavity. 
In  the  middle  of  the  fagade  was  an  aperture  closed 
in  with  striped  canvas  curtains.  This  aperture  was 
approached  from  the  ground  by  a  flight  of  wooden 
steps  through  the  platform. 

"Please,"  said  Beenham,  "please  give  my  name  as 
Mr.  Mole." 

Matilda  nodded  and  ran  up  the  wooden  steps  and 
through  the  aperture.     She  called: 

"It's  dark." 

When  Mr.  Mole  followed  her  he  found  himself 
standing  on  the  top  of  another  flight  of  steps  lead- 
ing down  into  impenetrable  gloom.  He  struck  a 
light  and  peered  into  an  auditorium  of  rough 
benches,  the  last  few  rows  of  which  were  raised 
above  the  rest.  Matilda  looked  up  at  him,  and  he 
was  struck  by  the  beauty  of  the  line  of  her  cheek 
from  the  brow  down  into  the  neck.  She  smiled  and 
her  teeth  flashed  white.    Then  the  match  went  out. 

He  lit  another,  and  they  moved  toward  the  stage, 
through  the  curtains  of  which  came  a  smell  of  onions 
and  cheese,  rather  offensive  on  such  a  hot  night. 
For  the  first  time  Beenham  began  to  feel  a  qualm 
as  to  the  adventure.  The  second  match  went  out, 
and  he  felt  Matilda  place  her  hand  on  his  arm, 
and  she  led  him  toward  the  stage,  told  him  to  duck 
his  head,  and  they  passed  through  into  a  narrow 
space,  lit  by  a  light  through  another  curtain,  and 
filled,  so  far  as  he  could  see,  with  scenery  and  prop- 
erties. 

"Have  you  been  here  before?"  he  said. 

24 


PRELUDE 

"When  I  was  a  little  girl.     I  think  it's  this  way." 

He  stumbled  and  brought  a  great  pole  and  a  mass 
of  dusty  canvas  crashing  down.  At  once  there  was 
the  battering  of  feet  on  boards,  the  din  of  voices 
male  and  female,  and  above  them  all  a  huge  boom- 
ing bass  roaring: 

"In  Hell's  name,  what's  that?" 

Matilda  giggled. 

A  curtain  was  torn  aside,  and  the  light  filled  the 
place  where  they  were.  Against  it  they  could  see 
silhouetted  the  shape  of  a  diminutive  man  craning 
forward  and  peering.  He  had  a  great  stick  in  his 
hand,  and  he  bellowed: 

"Come  out  o'  that!  It's  not  the  first  time  I've 
leathered  a  man,  and  it  won't  be  the  last.  This 
'ere's  a  theater,  my  theater.  It  ain't  a  doss  house. 
Come  out  o'  that."  , 

"It's  me,"  said  Matilda. 

"Gorm,  it's  a  woman!" 

"It's  me,  uncle." 

"Eh?" 

"It's  me,  Matilda  Burn." 

"What?    Jenny's  girl?" 

"Yes,  uncle." 

"Well,  I  never!     Who's  your  fancy?" 

"It's  Mr.  Mole." 

The  figure  turned  and  vanished,  and  the  curtain 
swung  to  again.  They  heard  whisperings  and  ex- 
clamations of  surprise,  and  in  a  moment  Mr.  Copas 
returned  with  a  short  ladder  which  he  thrust  down 
into  their  darkness.     They  ascended  it  and  found 

25 


OLD   MOLE 

themselves  on  the  stage.  Matilda  was  warmly  em- 
braced, while  her  companion  stood  shyly  by  and 
gazed  round  him  at  the  shabby  scenery  and  the 
footlights  and  the  hanging  lamps  over  his  head. 
He  found  it  oddly  exciting  to  be  standing  in  such  a 
place,  and  he  said  to  himself:  "This  is  the  stage," 
as  in  Rome  one  might  stand  and  say:  uThis  is  the 
Forum."  This  excitement  and  romantic  fervor  car- 
ried with  it  a  certain  helplessness,  as  though  he  had 
been  plunged  into  a  foreign  land  that  before  he 
had  only  dimly  realized. 

"This  is  the  stage !  This  is  the  theater!" 
It  was  a  strange  sensation  of  being  detached  and 
remote,  of  having  passed  out  of  ordinary  existence 
into  a  region  not  directly  concerned  with  it  and  sub- 
ject to  other  laws.  He  felt  entirely  foreign  to  it, 
but  then,  also,  under  its  influence,  he  felt  foreign  to 
his  own  existence  which  had  cast  him  high  and  dry 
and  ebbed  away  from  him.  It  was  like  one  of  those 
dreams  in  which  one  startlingly  leaves  the  earth 
and,  "as  startlingly,  finds  security  in  the  thin  air 
through  which,  bodiless,  one  soars.  There  was 
something  buoyant  in  the  atmosphere,  a  zestfulness, 
and  at  the  same  time  an  oppressiveness,  against 
which  rather  feebly  he  struggled,  while  at  the  same 
time  he  wondered  whether  it  came  from  the  place 
or  from  the  people.  Mr.  Copas,  the  large  golden- 
haired  lady,  the  thin,  hungry-looking  young  man, 
the  drabbish  young  woman,  the  wrinkled,  ruddy, 
beaming  old  woman,  the  loutish  giant,  the  elderly, 
seedy  individual,  the  little  girl  with  her  hair  hanging 

26 


PRELUDE 

in  rat's  tails,  who  clustered  round  Matilda  and 
smiled  at  her  and  glowered  at  her  and  kissed  her 
and  fondled  her. 

To  all  these  personages  he  was  presented  as  "Mr. 
Mole."  When  at  length  Mr.  Copas  and  his  niece 
had  come  to  an  end  of  their  exchange  of  family 
reminiscence,  the  men  shook  hands  with  him  and 
the  women  bowed  and  curtsied  with  varying  de- 
grees of  ceremony,  after  which  he  was  bidden  to 
supper  and  found  himself  squatting  in  a  circle  with 
them  round  a  disordered  collection  of  plates  and 
dishes,  bottles,  and  enameled  iron  cups,  all  set 
down  among  papers  and  costumes  and  half-finished 
properties. 

"Sit  down,  Mr.  Mole,"  said  Mr.  Copas.  "Any 
friend  of  any  member  of  my  family  is  my  friend. 
I'm  not  particular  noble  in  my  sentiments,  but  plain 
and  straightforward.  I'm  an  Englishman,  and  I 
say:  'My  country  right  or  wrong.'  I'm  a  family 
man  and  I  say:  'My  niece  is  my  niece,  right  or 
wrong.'  Them's  my  sentiments,  and  I  drink  toward 
you." 

When  Mr.  Copas  spoke  there  was  silence.  When 
he  had  finished  then  all  the  rest  spoke  at  once,  as 
though  such  moments  were  too  rare  to  be  wasted. 
Matilda  and  Mr.  Copas  engaged  in  an  earnest  con- 
versation and  the  clatter  of  tongues  went  on,  giv- 
ing Mr.  Mole  the  opportunity  to  still  his  now  raging 
hunger  and  slake  the  tormenting  thirst  that  had 
taken  possession  of  him.  Silence  came  again  and 
he  found  himself  being  addressed  by  Mr.  Copas. 

2? 


OLD   MOLE 

"Trouble  is  trouble,  I  say,  and  comes  to  all  of 
us.  For  your  kindness  to  my  niece,  much  thanks. 
She  will  come  along  of  us  and  welcome.  And  if 
you,  being  a  friend  of  hers,  feel  so  disposed,  you 
can  come  along,  too.  It's  a  come-day-go-day  kind 
of  life,  here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow,  but  there's 
glory  in  it.  It  means  work  and  plenty  of  it,  but 
no  one's  ever  the  worse  for  that." 

It  was  a  moment  or  two  before  Beenham  realized 
that  he  was  being  offered  a  position  in  the  troupe. 
He  took  a  long  draught  of  beer  and  looked  round  at 
the  circle  of  faces.  They  were  all  friendly  and 
smiling,  and  Matilda's  eyes  were  dancing  with  ex- 
citement. He  met  her  gaze  and  she  nodded,  and 
he  lost  all  sense  of  incongruity  and  said  that  he 
would  come,  adding,  in  the  most  courteous  and  ele- 
gant phrasing,  that  he  was  deeply  sensible  of  the 
privilege  extended  to  him,  but  that  he  must  return 
to  his  house  that  night  and  set  his  affairs  in  order, 
whereafter  he  would  with  the  greatest  pleasure  re- 
nounce his  old  life  and  enter  upon  the  new.  He 
was  doubtful  (he  said)  of  his  usefulness,  but  he 
would  do  his  best  and  endeavor  not  to  be  an  encum- 
brance. 

"If  you  gave  me  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Thrigsby," 
said  Mr.  Copas,  "I  would  turn  him,  if  not  into  a 
real  actor,  at  least  into  something  so  like  one  that 
only  myself  and  one  other  man  in  England  could 
tell  the  difference." 

Mr.  Mole  found  that  he  had  just  time  to  catch 
the  last  train  home,  and,   after  arranging  for  his 

28 


PRELUDE 

return  on  the  following  day,  he  exchanged  courtesies 
all  round,  was  shown  out  by  a  little  door  at  the 
back  of  the  stage,  and  walked  away  through  the 
now  empty  streets.  He  was  greatly  excited  and  up- 
lifted, and  it  was  not  until  he  reached  the  incline  of 
the  station  that  memory  reasserted  itself  and 
brought  with  it  the  old  habit  of  prudence,  discre- 
tion, and  common  sense.  He  was  able  to  go  far 
enough  back  to  see  the  little  dusty  theater  and  the 
queer  characters  in  it  as  fantastic  and  antipodean, 
but  when  he  came  to  the  events  of  that  evening  the 
contrast  was  blurred  and  the  world  of  settled  habit 
and  conviction  was  merged  into  the  unfamiliarity 
of  the  stage  and  became  one  with  it  in  absurdity. 
The  thought  of  stepping  back  from  his  late  experi- 
ence into  ordinary  existence  filled  him  with  anger 
and  hot  resentment:  the  passage  from  the  scene  at 
the  club  and  the  interview  with  his  chief  to  Mr. 
Copas's  company  was  an  easy  and  natural  transi- 
tion, or  so  it  seemed  when  he  thought  of  Matilda. 
He  felt  very  defiant  when  he  reached  Bigley  and 
half  hoped  that  he  might  meet  some  of  his  ac- 
quaintances. They  would  go  on  catching  the  early 
train  in  the  morning  and  the  through  train  in  the 
evening,  while  he  would  be  away  and  free.  Some 
such  feeling  he  had  always  had  in  July  of  superior- 
ity over  the  commercial  men  who  had  but  three 
weeks'  holiday  in  the  year,  while  he  had  eight  weeks 
at  a  stretch.  Now  he  was  to  go  away  forever,  and 
Bigley  would  talk  for  a  little  and  then  forget  and 
go  on  cluttering  about  its  families  and  its  ailments 

29 


OLD    MOLE 

and  its  inheritances  and  its  church  affairs  and  its 
golf  course  and  the  squabbles  with  the  Lord  of  the 
Manor.  He  met  no  one  and  found  his  house  shut 
up,  and  it  took  him  fully  half  an  hour  to  rouse  his 
man.  By  that  time  he  had  lost  his  temper  and 
had  no  desire  save  to  bully  the  fellow.  Everything 
else  was  wiped  out,  and  he  wanted  only  to  assert 
himself  in  bluster.  In  this  way  he  avoided  any 
awkward  wondering  whether  the  man  knew,  got  out 
the  information  that  he  was  going  away,  probably 
leaving  Bigley,  selling  the  house  and  furniture,  and 
would  write  further  instructions  when  he  had  settled 
down.  He  ordered  and  counter-ordered  and  or- 
dered breakfast  until  he  had  fixed  it  at  ten,  and 
at  last,  after  a  round  volley  of  oaths  because  the 
man  turned  to  him  with  a  question  in  his  eyes,  went 
upstairs  to  his  room,  rolled  into  bed,  and  slept  as 
deeply  as  an  enchanted  knight  beneath  the  castle  of 
a  fairy  princess. 

The  next  morning  he  went  through  his  accounts, 
found  that  his  capital  amounted  to  nearly  four  thou- 
sand pounds,  had  his  large  suitcase  packed  with  a 
careful  selection  of  clothes  and  books,  told  his  man 
he  was  going  abroad,  paid  him  three  months'  wages 
in  advance,  apologized  for  his  violence  overnight, 
shook  hands,  went  round  the  garden  to  say  good-bye 
to  his  vegetable  marrows  and  sweet  peas,  and  then 
departed. 

In  Thrigsby  he  saw  his  solicitor  (an  old  pupil), 
who  was  professionally  sympathetic,  but  took  his 
instructions  for  the  sale  of  his  house  and  furniture 

30 


PRELUDE 

gravely  and  promised  to  keep  his  whereabouts  and 
all  communications  secret. 

"It  is  a  most  serious  calamity,"  said  the  solicitor. 

"Damn  it  all,"  rejoined  Old  Mole,  "I  like  it." 
And  he  visited  his  bank.  The  manager  had  always 
thought  Beenham  "queer,"  and  received  his  rather 
unusual  instructions  without  astonishment. 

"You  are  leaving  Thrigsby?" 

"For  good.  Can't  think  why  IVe  stayed  here  so 
long." 

He  drew  a  large  sum  of  money  in  notes  and  gold 
and  dined  well  and  expensively  at  a  musty,  heavily 
carpeted  commercial  hotel.  When  the  porter  had 
placed  his  bag  in  a  cab  and  turned  for  his  instruc- 
tions he  gaped  in  surprise  on  being  told  to  drive  to 
the  Flat  Iron  Market.  Even  more  surprised  were 
the  frequenters  of  that  resort  when  the  cab  drew 
up  by  the  pavement  and  a  well-dressed,  middle-aged 
gentleman  with  gold  spectacles  descended  and 
pushed  his  way  through  the  crowd  jostling  and  chat- 
tering under  the  blare  and  din  of  the  mechanical 
organs  and  the  flicker  and  flare  of  the  naphtha  lamps 
to  the  back  of  Copas's  Theater  Royal,  which  he 
entered  by  the  stage  door.  It  was  whispered  that 
he  was  a  detective,  and  he  was  followed  by  a  buzz- 
ing train  of  men  and  women.  Disappointed  of  the 
looked-for  sensation,  they  soon  dispersed  and  were 
swallowed  up  in  the  shifting  crowd. 

Groping  through  the  darkness,  he  came  to  the 
greenroom — Mr.  Copas's  word  for  it — and  de- 
posited his  bag.     On  the  stage,  through  a  canvas 

3i 


OLD   MOLE 

curtain,  he  could  hear  the  thudding  of  feet  and  the 
bellowing  of  a  great  voice  broken  every  now  and 
then  with  cheers  at  regular  intervals  and  applause 
from  the  auditorium.  In  a  corner  on  a  basket  sat 
Matilda.  She  was  wearing  a  pasteboard  crown  and 
gazing  at  herself  in  a  mirror.  As  he  dropped  his 
bag  she  looked  up  and  grinned. 

"So  you've  come  back?  I  didn't  think  you 
would." 

"Yes,  I've  come  back.  The  school  has  broken 
up." 

She  removed  her  crown. 

"Like  to  see  the  show?  Uncle's  got  'em  to- 
night." 

"Got?    What  has  he  got?" 

"The  audience." 

She  led  him  to  the  front  of  the  house,  where  they 
were  compelled  to  stand,  for  all  the  benches  were 
full,  packed  with  sweating,  zestful  men  and  women 
who  had  paid  for  enjoyment  and  were  receiving  it  in 
full  measure. 

In  the  "Tales  out  of  School,"  published  after  H. 
J.  Beenham's  death  by  one  of  the  many  pupils  who 
became  grateful  on  his  achieving  celebrity,  there  is 
an  admirable  account  of  his  first  impression  of  the 
theater  which  can  only  refer  to  the  performance  of 
Mr.  Copas  in  the  Flat  Iron  Market.  Till  then  he 
says  he  had  always  regarded  the  theater  as  one  of 
those  pleasures  without  which  life  would  be  more 
tolerable,  one  of  those  pleasures  to  face  which  it  is 

32 


PRELUDE 

necessary  to  eat  and  drink  too  much.  The  two  re- 
spectable theaters  in  Thrigsby  were  maintained  by 
annual  pantomimes  and  kept  open  from  week  to 
week  by  the  visits  of  companies  presenting  replicas 
of  alleged  successful  London  plays.  He  had  never 
attended  either  theater  unless  some  one  else  paid. 
.  .  .  Here  now  in  this  ramshackle  Theater  Royal, 
half  tent,  half  booth,  his  sensations  were  very  mixed. 
At  first  the  shabby  scenery,  the  poverty  of  the  stage 
furniture,  the  tawdriness  of  the  costumes  of  the  play- 
ers, filled  him  with  a  pitying  sense  of  the  ludicrous. 
The  program  was  generous,  opening  with  "Robert 
Macaire,"  passing  on  to  "Mary  Queen  of  Scots," 
and  ending  with  a  farce  called  "Trouble  in  the 
Home,"  while  between  the  pieces  there  would  be 
song  and  dance  by  Mr.  Fitter,  the  celebrated  come- 
dian. All  this  was  announced  on  a  placard  hanging 
from  the  proscenium.  .  .  .  Mary  Queen  of  Scots 
was  sitting,  crowned,  on  a  Windsor  chair  at  the 
back  of  the  stage,  surrounded  with  three  courtiers. 
As  Darnley  (or  it  might  be  Bothwell),  Mr.  Copas 
was  delivering  himself  of  an  impassioned  if  halting 
narration,  addressed  to  the  hapless  Queen  through 
the  audience.  He  was  certainly  a  very  bad  actor, 
so  Beenham  thought  until  he  had  listened  to  him 
for  nearly  five  minutes,  at  the  end  of  which  a  change 
took  place  in  his  mind  and  he  found  himself  forced 
to  accept  Mr.  Copas's  own  view  of  the  traffic  of 
the  stage.  It  was  impossible  to  make  rhyme  or  rea- 
son of  the  play,  which  showed  the  most  superb  dis- 
regard for  history  and  sense.     Apart  from   Mr. 

33 


OLD    MOLE 

Copas  it  did  not  exist.  He  was  its  center  and  its 
circumference.  It  began  and  ended  in  him,  moved 
through  him  from  its  beginning  to  its  end.  The 
rest  of  the  characters  were  his  puppets.  When  he 
came  to  an  end  of  a  period  Mary  Queen  of  Scots 
would  turn  on  one  of  three  moods — the  tearful,  the 
regal,  the  noisily  defiant;  or  a  page  would  say,  "Me 
Lord!  Me  Lord!";  or  the  lugubrious  young  man, 
dressed  in  priestly  black,  would  borrow  from  an- 
other play  and  in  a  sepulchral  voice  declaim,  "Be- 
ware the  Ides  of  March."  The  performance  was 
an  improvisation  and  in  that  art  only  Mr.  Copas 
had  any  skill,  unless  he  had  deliberately  so  sub- 
dued the  rest  that  he  was  left  with  his  own  pas- 
sionate belief  in  himself  and  acting  as  acting  to 
clothe  the  naked  and  deformed  skeleton  with  flesh. 
Whatever  the  process  of  his  mind  he  did  succeed  in 
hypnotizing  himself  and  his  audience,  including  Mr. 
Mole  and  Matilda,  and  worked  up  to  a  certain 
height  and  ended  in  shocking  bathos  so  suddenly  as 
to  create  surprise  rather  than  derision.  He  be- 
lieved in  it  all  and  made  everybody  else  believe. 

Matilda  gave  a  sigh  as  the  curtains  were  drawn 
and  Mr.  Copas  appeared,  bowing  and  bowing  again, 
using  his  domination  over  his  audience  to  squeeze 
more  and  more  applause  out  of  them. 

"Ain't  it  lovely?"  said  Matilda. 

"It  is  certainly  remarkable,"  replied  Mr.  Mole. 

"You'd  never  think  he  had  a  floating  kidney. 
Would  you?" 

"I  would  not." 

34 


PRELUDE 

"It's  that  makes  him  a  little  quick  in  his  temper." 

From  the  audience  arose  a  smell  of  oranges,  beer 
and  peppermint,  and  there  were  much  talk  and 
laughter,  giggling  and  round  resounding  kissing. 
No  change  of  scene  was  considered  necessary  for  the 
song  and  dance  of  Mr.  Fitter,  who  turned  out  to  be 
the  lugubrious  young  man.  He  had  no  humor,  but 
he  worked  very  hard  and  created  some  amusement. 
Mr.  Copas  did  not  appear  in  the  farce,  which  was 
deplorable  and  made  Mr.  Mole  feel  depressed  and 
ashamed,  so  that  for  a  moment  his  old  point  of  view 
reasserted  itself  and  he  felt  aghast  at  the  under- 
taking upon  which  he  was  embarked.  A  moment  or 
two  before  he  had  been  telling  himself  that  this  was 
"life" — the  talk  and  the  laughter  and  the  kissing; 
now  he  felt  only  disgust  at  its  coarseness  and  com- 
monness. He  was  dejected  and  miserable,  stripped 
even  of  the  intellectual  interest  roused  by  Mr. 
Copas.  The  loutish  buffoons  on  the  stage  with  their 
brutal  humors  filled  him  with  resentment  at  their 
degradation.  Only  his  obstinacy  saved  him  from 
yielding  to  the  impulse  to  escape.  .  .  .  Matilda 
had  grown  tired  of  standing  and  had  taken  his  arm. 
She  laughed  at  nearly  all  the  jokes.  Her  laughter 
was  shrill  and  immoderate.  He  called  himself  fool, 
but  he  stayed. 

He  was  warmly  welcomed  by  Mr.  Copas  after 
the  performance.  His  congratulations  and  praise 
were  accepted  with  proper  modesty. 

"Acting,"  said  Mr.  Copas,  "is  a  nart.  There's 
some  as  thinks  it's  a  trick,  like  performing  dogs, 

3S 


OLD    MOLE 

but  it's  a  nart.  What  did  you  think  of  Mrs.  Co- 
pas  ?" 

The  question  was  embarrassing.  Fortunately  no 
answer  was  expected. 

"IVe  taught  her  everything  she  knows.  She's 
not  very  good  at  queens,  but  her  mad  scenes  can't 
be  beat,  can't  be  beat.  My  line's  tragedy  by  na- 
ture, but  a  nartist  has  to  be  everything.  .  .  .  What's 
your  line,  Mr.  Mole?" 

"I  don't  know  that  I  have  a  line." 

Mr.  Copas  rubbed  his  chin. 

"Of  course.  You  look  like  a  comic,  but  we'll  see, 
we'll  see.  You  couldn't  write  plays,  I  suppose? 
Not  that  there's  much  writing  to  be  done  when  you 
give  three  plays  a  night,  and  a  different  program 
every  night.  Just  the  plot's  all  we  want.  Are  you 
good  at  plots?" 

"I've  read  a  good  deal." 

"Ah!  I  was  never  a  reader  myself.  .  .  .  Of 
course,  I  can't  pay  you  anything  until  I  know 
whether  you're  useful  or  not." 

"I've  plenty  of  money,  thanks." 

Mr.  Copas  eyed  his  guest  shrewdly. 

"Of  course,"  he  said,  "of  course,  if  you  were 
really  keen  I  could  take  you  in  as  a  sort  of  partner." 

"I  don't  know  that  I " 

"Ten  pounds  would  do  it." 

In  less  than  half  an  hour  Mr.  Mole  was  a  part- 
ner in  the  Theater  Royal  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Copas 
were  drinking  his  health  in  Dublin  stout.  They 
found  him  a  bed  in  their  lodgings  in  a  surprisingly 

36 


PRELUDE 

clean  little  house  in  a  grimy  street,  and  they  sat  up 
half  the  night  discussing  plays  and  acting  with  prac- 
tical illustrations.  He  was  fascinated  by  the  frank 
and  childish  egoism  of  the  actor  and  enjoyed  firing 
him  with  the  plots  of  the  Greek  tragedies  and  as 
many  of  the  Latin  comedies  as  he  could  remember 
offhand. 

"By  Jove !"  cried  Copas.  "You'll  be  worth  three 
pounds  a  week  to  me.  Iffyjenny's  just  the  part  Mrs. 
Copas  has  been  looking  for  all  her  life.  Ain't  it, 
Carrie?" 

But  Mrs.  Copas  was  asleep. 

In  the  very  early  morning  the  Theater  Royal  was 
taken  to  pieces  and  stacked  on  a  great  cart.  The 
company  packed  themselves  in  and  on  a  caravan 
and  they  set  out  on  their  day's  journey  of  thirty 
miles  to  a  small  town  in  Staffordshire,  in  the  market- 
place of  which  they  were  to  give  a  three  weeks' 
season.  Mr.  Copas  drove  the  caravan  and  Mr. 
Mole  sat  on  the  footboard,  and  as  they  threaded 
their  way  through  the  long  suburbs  of  Thrigsby 
he  passed  many  a  house  where  he  had  been  a  wel- 
come guest,  many  a  house  where  he  had  discussed 
the  future  of  a  boy  or  an  academic  problem,  or 
listened  to  the  talk  of  the  handful  of  cultured  men 
attracted  to  the  place  by  its  school  and  university. 
How  few  they  were  he  had  never  realized  until 
now.  They  had  seemed  important  when  he  was 
among  them,  one  of  them;  their  work,  his  work, 
had  seemed  paramount,  the  justification  of,  the  ex- 

37 


OLD    MOLE 

cuse  for  all  the  alleged  squalor  of  Thrigsby  which 
he  had  never  explored  and  had  always  taken  on 
hearsay.  That  Thrigsby  was  huge  and  mighty  he 
had  always  admitted,  but  never  before  had  he  had 
any  sense  of  the  remoteness  from  its  existence  of 
himself  and  his  colleagues.  It  was  Thrigsby  that 
had  been  remote,  Thrigsby  that  was  ungrateful  and 
insensible  of  the  benefits  heaped  upon  it.  There 
had  always  been  a  sort  of  triumph  in  retrieving 
boys,  from  Thrigsby  for  culture.  He  could  only 
think  of  it  now  with  a  bitterness  that  fogged  his 
judgment.  His  discovery  of  the  Flat  Iron  Market 
made  him  conceive  Thrigsby  as  a  city  of  raw,  crude 
vitality  on  which  he  had  for  years  been  engaged  in 
pinning  rags  and  tatters  of  knowledge  in  the  pathetic 
belief  that  he  was  giving  it  the  boon  of  education — 
secondary  education.  And  there  frothed  and 
bubbled  in  his  tired  mind  all  the  jargon  of  his  old 
profession.  In  a  sort  of  waking  nightmare  he  set 
preposterous  questions  in  interminable  examinations 
and  added  up  lists  of  marks  and  averaged  them  with 
a  sliding  rule,  and  blue-penciled  false  quantities  in 
Latin  verse.  .  .  .  And  the  caravan  jogged  on.  He 
looked  back  over  the  years,  and  through  them  there 
trailed  a  long  monotonous  stream  of  boys,  who  had 
taken  what  he  had  to  give,  such  as  it  was,  and  given 
nothing  in  return.  He  saw  his  own  futile  attempts 
to  keep  in  touch  with  them  and  follow  their  careers. 
They  were  not  worth  following.  Nine-tenths  of 
them  became  clerks  in  banks  and  offices,  sank  into 
mediocre  existences,  married,  produced  more  boys. 

38 


PRELUDE 

The  mockery  of  It  all!  He  thought  of  his  col- 
leagues, how,  if  they  stayed,  they  lost  keenness  and 
zest.  How,  if  they  went,  it  was  to  seek  security 
and  ease,  to  marry,  to  "settle  down,1'  and  produce 
more  boys.  Over  seven  hundred  boys  in  the  school 
there  were,  and  all  as  alike  as  peas  in  a  pod,  all 
being  taught  year  in,  year  out,  the  same  things  out 
of  the  same  books  by  the  same  men.  His  thoughts 
wound  slowly  round  and  round  and  the  bitterness 
in  him  ate  into  his  soul  and  numbed  him.  The  cara- 
van jogged  on.  He  cared  nothing  where  he  was, 
whither  he  might  be  going,  what  became  of  him. 
Only  to  be  moving  was  enough,  to  be  moving  away 
from  the  monotony  of  boys  and  the  black  over- 
powering vitality  of  Thrigsby. 

It  was  not  easy  for  Mr.  Copas  to  be  silent  and 
he  addressed  his  new  partner  frequently  on  all  man- 
ner of  subjects,  the  weather,  the  horse's  coat,  the 
history  of  Mr.  Fitter,  and  all  with  such  absorption 
that  they  had  gone  eight  miles  and  were  just  pass- 
ing out  of  Thrigsby  into  its  southeast  spur  of  little 
chimney-dominated  villages  before  he  awoke  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  receiving  no  attention. 

"Dotty!"  he  said,  with  a  click  of  his  tongue,  and 
thereafter  he  fell  to  conning  new  speeches  for  the 
favorite  parts  of  his  repertory.  Slowly  they  crawled 
up  a  long  slope  until  they  rounded  the  shoulder  of  a 
low  rolling  hill,  from  whence  the  world  seemed  to 
open  up  before  them.  Below  lay  a  lake,  blue  under 
the  vivid  sky,  gleaming  under  the  green  wooded 
hills  that  enclosed  it.     Beyond  rose  line  upon  line 

39 


OLD    MOLE 

of  round  hummocky  hills.  The  caravan  stoppc 
and  with  a  jolt  Mr.  Mole  came  out  of  the  conter 
plation  of  the  past  when  he  was  known  as  H. 
Beenham,  and  sat  gaping  down  at  the  lake  and  tl 
hills.  He  was  conscious  of  an  almost  painful  sen: 
of  liberation.  The  view  invited  to  move  on  ar 
on,  to  range  over  hill  after  hill  to  discover  wh: 
might  lie  beyond. 

"What  hills  are  those?"  he  asked. 

"You  might  call  them  the  Pennine  Range." 

"The  backbone  of  England.  That's  a  schoc 
phrase." 

"You  been  asleep?    Eh?" 

"Not  exactly  asleep.     Kind  of  cramped." 

"You're  a  funny  bloke.  I  been  a-talking  to  yc 
and  you  never  listened." 

"Didn't  I?    I'm  sorry." 

"We  water  the  horses  just  here." 

There  was  a  spring  by  the  roadside  and  here  tr 
caravan  drew  up.  Mrs.  Copas  produced  victua 
and  beer.     Conversation  was  desultory. 

"Can't  do  with  them  there  big  towns,"  said  M 
Copas,  and  Old  Mole  then  noticed  a  peculiarity  c 
the  actor's  wife.  Whenever  he  spoke  she  gazed  ; 
him  with  a  rapt  stupid  expression  and  the  last  fe 
words  of  his  sentences  were  upon  her  lips  almo: 
before  they  left  his.  It  was  fascinating  to  watcl 
and  the  schoolmaster  forgot  the  feeling  of  repu^ 
nance  with  which  their  methods  of  eating  inspire 
him.  He  watched  Mrs.  Copas  and  heard  her  hu 
band,  so  that  every  remark  was  broken  up : 

40 


PRELUDE 

"Wouldn't  go  near  them  if  it  weren't  for 
the " 

"Money." 

"Give  me  a  bit  of  cheese  and  a  mug  of  beer  by 
the " 

"Roadside." 

"But  the  show's  got  to " 

"Earn  its  keep." 

"Earn  its  keep.  I'm  going  to  sleep.  Them  as 
wants  to  walk  on  can  walk  on." 

Mr.  Copas  rose  and  went  into  the  caravan  and 
his  wife  followed  him.  The  wagon  had  not  yet 
caught  .them  up. 

"Shall  we  walk  on?"  said  Matilda. 

"If  it's  a  straight  road." 

"Oh!  There'll  be  signposts.  We'll  maybe  find 
a  wood." 

So  they  walked  on.  She  was  wearing  a  blue  print 
frock  with  the  sleeves  rolled  up  to  her  elbow.  She 
had  very  pretty  arms. 

"I  sha'n't  stop  'ere  long,"  she  said. 

"No?     Why  not?" 

"It  ain't  good  enough.  Nothing's  good  enough 
if  you  stop  too  long  at  it.  Uncle'll  never  be  any 
different." 

"Will  any  of  us  ever  be  different?" 

"I  shall,"  she  said,  and  she  gave  a  queer  little 
defiant  laugh  and  her  stride  lengthened  so  that  she 
shot  a  pace  or  two  ahead  of  him.  She  turned  and 
laughed  at  him  over  her  shoulder. 

"Come  along,  slowcoach." 

4i 


OLD   MOLE 

He  grunted  and  made  an  effort,  but  could  not 
catch  her.  So  they  moved  until  they  came  to  a  little 
wood  with  a  white  gate  in  the  hedges.  Through 
this  she  went,  he  after  her,  and  she  flung  herself 
down  in  the  bracken,  and  lay  staring  up  through  the 
leaves  of  the  trees.  He  stood  looking  down  at  her. 
It  was  some  time  before  she  broke  the  silence  and 
said: 

"Sit  down  and  smell.  Ain't  it  good?  .  .  .  Do 
you  think  if  you  murdered  me  now  they'd  ever  find 
me?" 

"What  a  horrible  idea?" 

"I  often  dream  I've  committed  a  murder.  They 
say  it's  lucky.     Do  you  believe  in  dreams?" 

"Napoleon  believed  in  dreams." 

"Who  was  he?" 

"He  was  born  in  Corsica,  and  came  to  France 
with  about  twopence  halfpenny  in  his  pocket.  He 
made  himself  Emperor  before  he  was  forty,  and 
died  in  exile." 

"Still,  he'd  had  his  fling.  I'm  twenty-one.  How 
old  are  you?" 

"Twice  that  and  more." 

"Are  you  rich  or  clever  or  anything  like  that?" 

"No !"  he  smiled  at  the  question.  "Nothing  like 
that." 

She  sat  up  and  chewed  a  long  grass  stalk. 

"I'm  lucky."  She  gave  a  little  sideways  wag  of 
her  chin.  "I  know  I'm  lucky.  If  only  I'd  had 
some  education." 

"That's  not  much  good  to  you." 

42 


PRELUDE 

"It  makes  you  speak  prop'ly." 

That  was  a  view  of  education  never  before  pre- 
sented to  him.  Certainly  the  sort  of  education  he 
had  doled  out  had  done  little  to  amend  the  speech 
of  his  Thrigsbian  pupils. 

"Is  that  all  you  want — to  speak  properly?" 

"Yes.     You  speak  prop-properly." 

"Nothing  else." 

"There  is  a  difference  between  gentlemen  and 
others.    I  want  to  have  to  do  with  gentlemen." 

"And  ladies?" 

"Oh!     I'll  let  the  ladies  look  after  theirselves." 

"Them  selves." 

"Themselves." 

She  flushed  at  the  correction  and  a  dogged  sulky 
expression  came  into  her  eyes.  She  nibbled  at  the 
grass  stalk  until  it  disappeared  into  her  mouth. 
For  a  moment  or  two  she  sat  plucking  at  her  lower 
lip  with  her  right  finger  and  thumb.  Through  her 
teeth  she  said: 

"I  will  do  it." 

Contemptuously,  with  admirable  precision,  she 
spat  out  the  grass  stalk  against  the  trunk  of  a  tree. 

"Did  you  ever  see  a  lady  do  that?  You  never 
did.     You'll  see  me  do  things  you've  never  seen  a 

lady  do.     You'll  see  me But  you've  got  to 

teach  me  first.  You'll  teach  me,  won't  you?  .  .  . 
You  won't  go  away  until  you've  taught  me?  You 
won't  go  away?" 

"You're  the  most  extraordinary  young  woman  I 
ever  met  in  my  life." 

43 


OLD    MOLE 

"Did  you  come  to  uncle  because  of  me?" 

"Eh?" 

He  stared  at  her.  The  idea  had  not  presented 
itself  to  him  before.  She  was  not  going  to  allow 
him  to  escape  it. 

"Did  you  come  to  uncle  because  of  me?" 

He  knew  that  it  was  so. 

"Yes,"  he  said.     "Hadn't  we  better  go?" 

"Not  yet." 

She  was  kneeling  beside  him  mischievously  tick- 
ling the  back  of  his  hand  with  a  frond  of  bracken. 

"Not  yet.  Do  you  remember  what  you  said  to 
me  that  night?" 

"No.    What  did  I  say?" 

"You  said  you'd  never  been  in  love." 

"No  more  I  have." 

"Come  along  then." 

The  caravan  hove  in  sight  as  they  reached  the 
gate.  She  joined  Mrs.  Copas  inside,  and  he,  Mr. 
Copas,  on  the  footboard.  He  was  filled  with  a 
bubbling  humor  and  was  hard  put  to  it  not  to  laugh 
aloud.  He  had  no  clear  memory  of  the  talk  in  the 
wood,  but  he  liked  the  delicious  absurdity  of  it. 

"In  love?"  he  said  to  himself.    "Nonsense." 

All  the  same  he  could  not  away  with  the  fact 
that  he  had  a  new  zest  and  pleasure  in  contemplat- 
ing the  future.  Thrigsby  and  all  its  works  fell 
away  behind  him  and  he  was  glad  of  his  promise 
to  teach  the  girl.  .  .  .  One  girl  after  hundreds  of 
boys !  It  had  been  one  of  his  stock  jests  for  public 
dinners  in  Thrigsby  that  the  masters  of  the  Gram- 

44 


PRELUDE 

mar  School  and  the  mistresses  of  the  High  School 
should  change  places.  No  one  had  ever  taken  him 
seriously  until  now  Fate  had  done  so.  Of  course 
it  could  not  last,  this  new  kind  of  perambulatory 
school  with  one  master  and  one  pupil;  the  girl  was 
too  attractive;  she  would  be  snapped  up  at  once, 
settle  down  as  a  wife  and  mother  before  she  knew 
where  she  was..  In  his  thoughts  he  had  so  isolated 
himself  with  her  that  old  prejudices  leaped  up  in 
him  and  gave  him  an  uncomfortable  sense  of  indis- 
cretion. That,  however,  he  placated  with  the  re- 
minder that,  after  all,  they  were  chaperoned  by 
Mrs.  Copas. 

"That's  a  fine  girl,  your  niece,,,  he  said  to  Mr. 
Copas. 

"Aye.  A  handsome  bit  o'  goods.  She  says  to 
me,  she  says,  'I  want  to  be  a  nactress,  uncle/  she 
says.  And  I  says :  'You  begin  at  the  bottom,  young 
lady,  and  maybe  when  you're  your  aunt's  age  you'll 
be  doing  the  work  your  aunt  does.'  They  tell  me, 
Mr.  Mole,  that  in  London  they  have  leading  ladies 
in  their  teens.  I've  never  seen  the  woman  who 
could  play  leads  under  forty.  .  .  .  Good  God! 
Hi!     Carrie!    Tildy!" 

Mr.  Mole  had  fallen  from  the  footboard,  flat  on 
his  face  in  the  road. 


When  he  came  to  himself  he  thought  with  a  pre- 
cision and  clarity  that  amounted  almost  to  vision  of 
his  first  arrival  at  Oxford,   saw  himself  eagerly, 

45 


OLD    MOLE 

shyly,  stepping  down  from  the  train  and  hurrying 
through  the  crowd  of  other  young  men,  eager  and 
shy,  and  meeting  school  acquaintances.  He  remem- 
bered with  singular  acuteness  the  pang  of  shame 
he  had  felt  on  encountering  Blazering  who  was 
going  to  Magdalen  while  he  himself  was  a  scholar 
of  Lincoln.  He  pursued  the  stripling  who  had 
been  himself  out  of  the  station  and  up  past  the  gaol, 
feeling  amazingly,  blissfully  youthful  when  he  put 
up  his  hand  and  found  a  stiff  beard  upon  his  chin. 
Gone  was  the  vision  of  Oxford,  gone  the  sensation 
of  youth,  and  he  realized  that  he  was  in  bed  in  a 
stranger's  room,  which,  without  his  glasses,  he  could 
not  see  distinctly.  There  was  a  woman  by  his  bed- 
side, a  stout  woman,  with  a  strong  light  behind  her, 
so  that  he  could  not  distinguish  her  features.  It 
was  a  very  little  room,  low  in  the  ceiling.  The 
smell  of  it  was  good.  It  had  one  small  window, 
which  was  open,  and  through  it  there  came  up  the 
hubbub  of  voices  and  the  grinding  beat  and  blare 
of  a  mechanical  organ  that  repeated  one  tune  so 
quickly  that  it  seemed  always  to  be  afraid  it  would 
not  have  time  to  reach  the  end  before  it  began 
again.  The  woman  was  knitting.  He  tried  to  re- 
member who  she  might  be,  but  failing,  and  feeling 
mortified  at  his  failure,  he  consoled  himself  with 
the  reflection  that  he  was  ill — ill-in-bed,  one  of  the 
marked  degrees  of  sickness  among  schoolboys.  How 
ill?    He  had  never  been  ill  in  his  life. 

"Can  I  have  my  spectacles?"  he  said. 

"Oh!"    The  knitting  in  the  woman's  hands  went 

46 


PRELUDE 

clattering  to  the  floor.  "Lor!  Mr.  Mole,  you  did 
give  me  a  start.  I  shall  have  the  palpitations,  same 
as  my  mother.  My  mother  had  the  palpitations  for 
forty  years  and  then  she  died  of  something  else." 

"If  I  had  my  spectacles  I  could  see  who  it  is 
speaking." 

"It's  Mrs.  Copas.  Don't  you  know  me,  Mr. 
Mole?" 

"I — er.     I  .  .  .  .     This  is  your  house?" 

"Tts  lodgings,  Mr.  Mole.  You've  been  sick, 
Mr.  Mole,  you  have.  Prostrated  on  your  back  for 
nearly  a  week,  Mr.  Mole.  You  did  give  us  all  a 
turn,  falling  off  the  caravan  like  that  into  the  King's 
high  road.  You'd  never  believe  the  pool  of  blood 
you  left  in  the  road,  Mr.  Mole.    But  it  soon  dried 

up " 

He  began  to  have  a  glimmering,  dimly  to  re- 
member, a  road,  a  caravan,  a  horse's  tail,  dust,  a 
droning  voice  behind  him,  but  still  the  name  of 
Copas  meant  nothing  to  him. 

"Copas!    Copas!"  he  said  to  himself,  but  aloud. 

Mrs.  Copas  produced  the  spectacles  and  placed 
them  on  his  nose.  Then  she  leaned  over  him  in 
his  bed  and  in  the  loud  indulgent  voice  with  which 
the  unafflicted  humor  the  deaf,  she  said: 

"Yes!   Mrs.  Copas.  Matilda's  aunt.    You  know." 

That  brought  the  whole  adventure  flooding  back. 

Matilda!  The  girl  who  wanted  to  speak  prop- 
erly, the  girl  whom  he  had  found  in  the  smelly  little 
theater.  Nol  Not  in  the  theater!  In  the  train! 
He  writhed  and  went  hot,  and  his  head  began  to 

47 


OLD    MOLE 

throb,  and  he  felt  a  strange  want  of  coordination 
among  the  various  parts  of  his  body. 

"I'm  afraid,"  he  said.    "I'm  afraid  I  am  ill." 

"There!  There!"  said  Mrs.  Copas.  "We'll 
soon  pull  you  round.  I'm  used  to  the  nursing;  not 
that  Mr.  Copas  is  ever  ill.  He  says  a  nartist  can't 
afford  to  be  ill,  but  we  had  a  comic  once  who  used 
to  have  fits." 

"It's  very  good  of  you.  I  must  have  been  an 
incubus.  I'm  sure  I  must  be  taking  you  away  from 
the  theater." 

"We've  got  a  new  tune  on  the  organ  and  we're 
doing  splendid  business.  Mr.  Copas  will  be  glad  to 
hear  you've  asked  for  your  spectacles.  .  .  .  Doc- 
tor says  you  mustn't  talk." 

And,  indeed,  he  had  lost  all  desire  to  do  so.  His 
head  ached  so  that  he  could  not  keep  his  eyes  open, 
nor  think,  nor  hear  anything  but  a  confused  buzz, 
and  he  sank  back  into  the  luxury  of  feeling  sorry 
for  himself. 

Nothing  broke  in  upon  that  sensation  until  sud- 
denly the  organ  stopped.  That  startled  him  and 
set  him  listening.  In  the  distance,  muffled,  he  could 
hear  the  huge  booming  voice  of  Mr.  Copas,  but 
not  what  he  said. 

"Nice  people,"  he  thought.     "Nice  kind  people." 

There  were  three  medicine  bottles  by  his  bed-side. 
They  suddenly  caught  his  eye  and  he  gazed  at  them 
long  and  carefully.  One  was  full  and  two  were 
half  empty.  Their  contents  were  brown,  reddish, 
and  white. 

48 


PRELUDE 

"I  must  be  very  ill,"  he  said  to  himself  mourn- 
fully. There  darted  in  on  him  a  feeling  of  fun. 
"No  one  knows!  I  am  ill  and  no  one  knows.  Not 
a  soul  knows.  They  won't  know.  They  won't 
ever  know." 

That  seemed  to  settle  it.  "They"  sank  away. 
He  hurled  defiance  after  them,  opened,  as  it  were, 
a  trap-door  in  the  past,  and  gloated  over  the  sight 
of  "them"  hurtling  down  and  down.  He  felt  bet- 
ter after  that.  The  pain  in  his  head  was  almost 
gone.  His  bed  seemed  to  be  floating,  drifting,  turn- 
ing on  the  tide,  while  it  was  moored  to  Mrs.  Copas. 
He  gazed  at  her  and  saw  in  her  the  comfortable, 
easy,  hovering  present.  He  had  only  to  cut  the 
painter  to  drift  out  into  the  wide  future.  When  he 
opened  his  mouth  to  tell  Mrs.  Copas  that  he  re- 
membered her  perfectly  she  laid  her  finger  on  her 
lips  and  said  "Ssh!"  and  when  he  insisted  on  grunt- 
ing out  a  word,  she  smacked  the  back  of  her  fat 
hand  roguishly  and  cried: 

"Naughty!" 

At  that  he  giggled  helplessly  and  went  on  gig- 
gling until  he  was  near  crying. 

"Histrionics!"  said  Mrs.  Copas,  and  gave  him 
brandy. 

Matilda  appeared  at  the  door  and  was  pushed 
out.  At  that  Mr.  Mole,  who  had  seen  her,  be- 
gan to  weep  and  sobbed  like  a  disappointed  child, 
and  went  on  sobbing  until  Matilda  was  allowed  to 
come  in  and  sit  by  his  side.  She  sat  on  the  bed,  and 
he  stopped  his  sobbing  as  abruptly  as  a  horse  will 

49 


OLD    MOLE 

come  to  a  standstill  after  a  mad  sunset  gallop.  Mrs. 
Copas  left  them. 

Matilda  sat  stroking  her  cheek  and  gazing  at 
him.     She  cocked  her  head  on  one  side  and  said: 

"Glad  you're  better,  but  I  don't  like  men  with 
beards.     Napoleon  didn't  have  a  beard." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"I  bought  a  book  about  him  for  a  penny.  I  like 
Josephine." 

"I  don't  know  much  about  it,  but  I  always  felt 
sorry  for  her." 

"She  gave  as  good  as  she  got.  That's  why  I  like 
her.  ...     I  had  a  part  to  do  to-night." 

"A  long  part?" 

"No.  I  just  had  to  say  to  uncle,  'Won't  you  give 
her  another  chance?'  His  erring  wife  had  just  re- 
turned to  him." 

"Did  you  do  it  well?" 

"No.  Uncle  said  no  one  who  wasn't  at  the  back 
of  the  stage  could  hear  me." 

"Oh!     Did  you  like  it?" 

"Yes.     I  felt  funny  like." 

Mr.  Mole  coughed.     Matilda  stopped. 

"What  did  I  say?" 

"Funny  like." 

"Don't  people  say  that?" 

"It  is  unusual." 

"Oh!" 

"I  wasn't  a  bit  nervous.  Uncle  says  that's  a  bad 
sign.  He  says  I  looked  all  right,  though  I'm  sure 
I  was  an  object  with  that  paint  stuff  on  my  face  and 

5° 


PRELUDE 

the  red  all  in  the  wrong  place.  Aunt  wouldn't  let 
me  do  it  myself.  .  .  .  You  will  cut  your  beard 
off?" 

"I  don't  know.     I  might  like  it." 

She  handed  him  a  mirror,  and  mischief  danced 
in  her  eyes  as  she  watched  his  disconcerted  expres- 
sion.    "Bit  of  a  surprise,  eh?" 

He  could  find  nothing  to  say.  Impossible  for 
him  to  lay  the  mirror  down.  For  years  he  had  ac- 
cepted a  certain  idea  of  his  personal  appearance — 
ruddy,  heavy-jowled,  with  a  twinkle  behind  spec- 
tacles surmounted  by  a  passably  high  forehead  that 
was  furrowed  by  the  lines  of  a  frown  almost  delib- 
erately cultivated  for  the  purposes  of  inspiring  ter- 
ror in  small  boys  delinquent.  Now,  in  the  sharp- 
ened receptivity  of  his  issue  from  unconsciousness, 
his  impression  was  one  of  roundness,  round  face, 
round  eyes,  round  brow,  round  head  (balder  than 
he  had  thought) — all  accentuated  by  the  novelty 
of  his  beard,  that  was  gray,  almost  white.  Age 
and  roundness.  Fearful  of  meeting  Matilda's  gaze, 
he  went  on  staring  into  the  mirror.  Her  youth, 
the  fun  bubbling  up  in  her,  reproached  him,  made 
him  feel  defenceless  against  her,  and,  though  he 
delighted  in  her  presence,  he  was  resentful.  She 
had  so  many  precious  qualities  to  which  he  could 
not  respond. 

"I  'spect  I  must  go  now,"  she  said. 

"Yes.     I'm  rather  tired." 

She  took  the  mirror  from  him,  patted  his  hand, 
and  soothed  him,  saying: 

5* 


OLD    MOLE 

"You'll  soon  be  up  and  doing,  and  then  you'll  be- 
gin to  teach  me,  won't  you?" 

"How  would  it  be  if  you  came  and  read  to  me 
every  evening  before  the  play?  Then  we  could 
begin  at  once." 

"Shall  I?"  She  warmed  to  the  plan.  "What 
shall  I  read?" 

"You  might  read  your  book  about  Napoleon." 

"Oh!     Lovely!" 

Mrs.  Copas  returned  to  give  him  his  medicine 
and  to  tuck  him  up  for  the  night. 

"What  day  is  it?"  he  asked. 

"Saturday." 

"Are  there  any  letters  for  me?"  He  remem- 
bered then  that  there  could  be  none,  that  he  was 
no  longer  his  old  self,  that  an  explosion  in  his 
affairs  had  hurled  him  out  of  his  old  habitual 
existence  and  left  him  bruised  and  broken  among 
strangers. 

"I  would  like,"  he  said,  "to  shave  to-morrow." 

"Yes,  yes,"  replied  Mrs.  Copas,  humoring  him. 
"I'm  in  the  next  room  if  you  want  anything.  Doc- 
tor said  you  was  to  have  as  much  sleep  as  you  could 
get.  Being  Saturday  night,  and  you  an  invalid,  Mr. 
Copas  bought  you  some  grapes  and  sponge-cake, 
and  he  wants  to  know  if  you'd  like  some  port  wine. 
We  thought  it  'ud  make  you  sleep." 

He  expressed  a  desire  for  port,  and  she  bustled 
into  the  next  room  and  came  back  with  a  tumbler- 
ful. He  was,  or  fancied  he  was,  something  of  a 
connoisseur,  and  he  propped  himself  up  and  sipped 

52 


PRELUDE 

the  dark  liquid,  and,  as  he  was  wont,  rolled  it  round 
his  tongue.  It  tasted  of  ink  and  pepper.  He 
wanted  to  spit  it  out,  but,  blinking  up  at  Mrs.  Copas, 
he  saw  the  good  creature  beaming  at  him  in  rapt 
indulgence,  and  could  not  bring  himself  to  offend 
her.  With  his  gorge  rising  he  sipped  down  about 
a  third  of  the  tumbler's  contents  and  then  feebly, 
miserably  held  it  out  toward  her. 

"A  bit  strong  for  you?" 

He  nodded,  drew  the  bed-clothes  up  over  his 
shoulders  and  feigned  sleep.  The  light  was  put  out 
and  he  heard  Mrs.  Copas  creep  into  the  next  room. 
Sleep?  The  fiery  liquor  sent  the  blood  racing  and 
throbbing  through  his  veins.  The  palms  of  his 
hands  were  dry  and  hot,  and  his  head  seemed  to  be 
bulging  out  of  its  skin.  His  ears  were  alert  to 
every  sound,  and  to  every  sound  his  nerves  re- 
sponded with  a  thrill.  He  could  hear  footsteps  on 
the  cobbles  of  the  street  outside,  voices,  hiccoughs, 
a  woman's  voice  singing.  These  were  the  accom- 
paniment to  nearer  sounds,  a  duet  in  the  next  room, 
a  deep  bass  muttering,  and  a  shrill  argumentative 
treble.  The  bass  swelled  into  anger.  The  treble 
roared  into  pleading.  The  bass  became  a  roar, 
the  treble  a  squeak.  It  was  exciting,  exasperating. 
In  his  bed  Beenham  tossed  from  side  to  side.  He 
did  not  want  to  listen  to  their  altercation,  but  sleep 
would  not  come  to  him.  The  bass  voice  broke  into 
a  crackling;  then  spluttering,  furious  sounds  came. 
The  treble  squealed  pitifully.  Came  the  thud  and 
smack  of  a  fist  on  flesh  and  bon&,  a  gasp,  a  whine, 

i      S3 


OLD    MOLE 

a  whimper,  another  thud  and  smack,   and  growls 
from  the  bass,  then  silence.  .  .  . 

Sick  at  heart  Old  Mole  lay  in  his  bed  staring, 
staring  into  the  darkness,  and  the  blood  in  him 
boiled  and  bubbled,  and  his  skin  was  taut  and  he 
shivered.  He  had  heard  of  men  beating  their 
wives,  but  as  one  hears  of  the  habits  of  wild  ani- 
mals in  African  forests;  he  had  thought  of  it  as 
securely  as  here  in  England  one  may  think  of  a 
man-eating  tiger  near  an  Indian  village.  Now,  here, 
in  the  next  room,  the  thing  had  happened.  Manli- 
ness, that  virtue  which  at  school  had  been  held  up 
as  the  highest  good,  bade  him  arise  and  defend  the 
woman.  In  theory  manliness  had  always  had  things 
perfectly  its  own  way.  In  practice,  now,  sound 
sense  leaped  ahead  of  virtue,  counted  the  cost  and 
accurately  gauged  the  necessity  of  action.  In  the 
first  place  to  defend  Mrs.  Copas  would  mean  an 
intrusion  into  the  sanctuary  of  human  life,  the  con- 
jugal chamber;  in  the  second  place,  in  spite  of  many 
familiar  pictures  of  St.  George  of  Cappadocia  (sub- 
sequently of  England),  it  would  be  embarrassing 
to  defend  Mrs.  Copas  in  her  night  attire;  in  the 
third  place,  the  assault  had  grown  out  of  their  alter- 
cation of  which  he  had  heard  nothing  whatever; 
and,  lastly,  it  might  be  a  habit  with  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Copas  to  smite  and  be  smitten.  Therefore  Old 
Mole  remained  in  his  bed,  faintly  regretting  the 
failure  of  manliness,  fighting  down  his  emotion  of 
disgust,  and  endeavoring  to  avoid  having  to  face 
his  position.    In  vain:  shunning  all  further  thought 

54 


PRELUDE 

of  the  miserable  couple  in  the  next  room,  he  was 
driven  back  upon  himself,  to  his  wretched  wonder- 
ing: 

"What  have  I  done?" 

He  had  thrown  up  his  very  pleasant  life  in 
Thrigsby  and  Bigley,  a  life,  after  all,  of  some  con- 
sequence, for  what?  .  .  .  For  the  society  of  a  dis- 
reputable strolling  player  who  was  blind  with  con- 
ceit, was  apt  to  get  drunk  on  Saturday  nights,  and 
in  that  condition  violently  to  assault  the  wife  of  his 
bosom.  And  he  had  entered  into  this  adventure 
with  enthusiasm,  had  seen  their  life  as  romantic 
and  adventurous,  deliberately  closing  his  eyes  to  the 
brutality  and  squalor  of  it.  Thud,  whack!  and  there 
were  the  raw  facts  staring  him  in  the  face. 

There  came  a  little  moaning  from  the  next  room : 
never  a  sound  from  the  bass :  and  soon  all  was  still, 
save  for  the  mice  in  the  skirting  board  and 
occasional  footsteps  on  the  cobbles  of  the  street 
outside. 

No  sleep  came  to  Old  Mole  until  the  pale  light 
of  dawn  crept  into  his  room  to  show  him,  shiver- 
ing, its  meanness  and  poverty.  It  sickened  him,  but 
when  in  reaction  he  came  to  consider  his  old  mode 
of  living  that  seemed  so  paltry  as  to  give  a  sort  of 
savor  to  the  coarseness  of  this.  .  .  .  Anyhow,  he 
reflected,  he  was  tied  to  his  bed,  could  not  take  any 
action,  and  must  wait  upon  circumstance,  and  hope 
only  that  there  might  not  be  too  many  violent  shocks 
in  store  for  him. 

Mrs.  Copas  bore  the  marks  of  her  husband's  at- 

55 


OLD    MOLE 

tentions :  a  long  bruise  over  her  right  eye  and  down 
to  the  cheek-bone,  and  a  cut  on  her  upper  lip  which 
had  swelled  into  an  unsightly  protuberance.  Her 
spirit  seemed  to  be  entirely  unaffected,  and  she 
beamed  upon  him  from  behind  her  temporary  de- 
formities. When  she  asked  him  if  he  had  slept 
well,  he  lied  and  said  he  had  slept  like  a  top. 

She  brought  him  hot  water,  razor,  brush  and 
soap,  and  he  shaved.  Off  came  his  beard,  and, 
after  long  scrutiny  of  his  appearance  in  the  mirror 
and  timid  hesitation,  he  removed  the  moustache 
which  had  been  his  pride  and  anxiety  during  his 
second  year  at  Oxford,  since  when  it  had  been  his 
constant  and  unobtrusive  companion.  The  effect 
was  startling.  His  upper  lip  was  long  and  had, 
if  the  faces  of  great  men  be  any  guide,  the  promise 
of  eloquence.  There  was  a  new  expression  in  his 
face,  of  boldness,  of  firmness,  of — as  he  phrased  it 
himself — benevolent  obstinacy.  His  changed  counte- 
nance gave  him  so  much  pleasure  that  he  spent  the 
morning  gazing  into  the  mirror  at  different  angles. 
With  such  a  brow,  such  an  upper  lip,  such  lines 
about  the  nose  and  chin,  it  seemed  absurd  that  he 
should  have  spent  twenty-five  years  as  an  assistant 
master  in  a  secondary  school.  Then  he  laughed  at 
himself  as  he  realized  that  he  was  behaving  as  he 
had  not  done  since  the  ambitious  days  at  Oxford 
when  he  had  endeavored  to  decide  on  a  career.  Rue- 
fully he  remembered  that  in  point  of  fact  he  had 
not  decided.  With  a  second  in  Greats  he  had  taken 
the  first  appointment  that  turned  up.     His  history 

56 


PRELUDE 

had  been  the  history  of  thousands.  One  thing  only 
he  had  escaped — marriage,  the  ordinary  timid,  mat- 
ter-of-fact, sugar-coated  marriage  upon  means  that 
might  or  might  not  prove  sufficient.  After  that, 
visiting  his  friends*  houses,  he  had  sighed  senti- 
mentally, but,  with  all  the  eligible  women  of  his  ac- 
quaintance— and  they  were  not  a  few — he  had  been 
unable  to  avoid  a  quizzical  tone  which  forbade  the 
encouragement  of  those  undercurrents  upon  which, 
he  had  observed,  middle-aged  men  were  swept  pain- 
lessly into  matrimony.  .  .  .  Pondering  his  clean- 
shaven face  in  the  mirror  he  felt  oddly  youthful 
and  excited. 

In  the  evening  Matilda  came  as  she  had  prom- 
ised, with  the  book,  which  proved  to  be  that  Life  of 
Napoleon  by  Walter  Scott  which  so  incensed  Heine. 
The  sun  shone  in  at  the  window  upon  the  girl's 
brown  hair,  and  as  she  opened  the  book  the  church 
bells  began  to  ring  with  such  an  insistent  buzzing 
that  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  read.  As  he  lay 
in  bed  Old  Mole  thought  of  Heine  lying  in  his 
mattress-grave,  being  visited  by  his  Mouche,  just 
such  another  charming  creature  as  this,  young  and 
ardent,  and  by  her  very  presence  soothing;  only  he 
was  no  poet,  but  a  man  dulled  by  years  of  unques- 
tioning service.  He  gazed  at  Matilda  as  he  could 
not  recollect  ever  having  gazed  at  a  woman,  criti- 
cally, but  with  warm  interest.  There  was  a  kind  of 
bloom  on  her,  the  fragrance  and  graciousness  that, 
when  he  had  encountered  it  as  a  young  man,  had 
produced  in  him  a  delicious  blurring  of  the  senses, 

57 


OLD   MOLE 

an  almost  intoxication  wherein  dreadfully  he  hac 
lost  sight  of  the  individual  in  the  possession  oi 
them,  and  considered  her  only  as  woman.  Now  hi; 
subjection  to  the  spell  only  heightened  his  sense  ol 
Matilda's  individuality  and  sharpened  his  curiosity 
about  her.  Also  it  stripped  him  of  his  preoccupa 
tion  with  himself  and  his  own  future,  and  he  fell  tc 
considering  hers  and  wondering  what  the  work 
might  hold  for  her.  .  .  .  Like  most  men  he  hac 
his  little  stock  of  generalizations  about  women,  ho^ 
they  were  mysterious,  capricious,  cruel,  unintelli- 
gent, uncivilized,  match-making,  tactless,  untruthful 
etc.,  but  to  Matilda  he  could  not  apply  them.  He 
wanted  to  know  exactly  how  she  personally  felt 
thought,  saw,  moved,  lived,  and  he  refused  to  make 
any  assumption  about  her.  This  curiosity  of  hi< 
was  not  altogether  intellectual:  it  was  largely  phy- 
sical, and  it  grew.  He  was  annoyed  that  he  hac 
not  seen  her  come  into  the  room  to  mark  how  she 
walked,  and  to  procure  this  satisfaction  he  askec 
her  to  give  him  a  glass  of  water.  He  watched  her, 
She  walked  easily  with,  for  a  woman,  a  long  stride 
and  only  a  very  slight  swing  of  the  hips,  and  a  drag 
of  the  arms  that  pleased  him  mightily.  As  she  gave 
him  the  glass  of  water  she  said: 

"You  do  look  nice.  I  knew  you  would,  without 
that  moustache. " 

She  had  a  strong  but  pleasant  North-Country  ac- 
cent, and  in  her  voice  there  was  a  faint  huskiness 
that  he  found  very  moving,  though  it  was  only  later, 
when  he  analyzed  the  little  thrills  which  darted 

58 


PRELUDE 

about  him  in  all  his  conversations  with  her,  that 
he  set  it  down  to  her  voice.  .  .  .  She  resumed  her 
seat  by  the  foot  of  his  bed  with  her  book  in  her 
hand,  and  his  physical  curiosity  waxed  only  the 
greater  from  the  satisfaction  he  had  given  it.  He 
could  find  no  excuse  for  more,  and  when  the  bells 
ceased  he  took  refuge  in  talk. 

"Where  were  you  born,  Matilda  ?" 

"In  a  back  street,"  she  said.  "Father  was  a 
fitter,  and  mother  was  a  dressmaker,  but  she  died, 
and  father  got  the  rheumatism,  so  as  we  all  'ad — 
had — to  work.     There  was " 

"Were."    She  blushed  and  looked  very  cross. 

"Were  three  girls  and  two  boys.  Jim  has  gone 
to  Canada,  and  George  is  on  the  railway,  and  both 
my  sisters  are  married,  one  in  the  country,  and  one 
in  Yorkshire.     I'm  the  youngest." 

"Did  you  go  to  school?" 

"Oh !  yes.  Jackson  Street,  but  I  left  when  I  was 
fourteen  to  go  into  a  shop.  That  was  sitting  still 
all  day  and  stitching,  or  standing  all  day  behind  a 
counter  with  women  coming  in  and  getting 
narked " 

"Getting  what?" 

"Narked — cross-like." 

"I  see.    So  you  didn't  care  about  that?" 

"No.  There  is  something  in  me  here" — she  laid 
her  hand  on  her  bosom — "that  goes  hot  and  hard 
when  I'm  not  treated  fair,  and  then  I  don't  care  a 
brass  farthing  what  'appens." 

She  was  too  excited  as  she  thought  of  her  old 

59 


OLD   MOLE 

wrongs  to  correct  the  last  dropped  aitch,  though  she 
realized  it  and  bit  her  lip. 

"I  been  in  service  three  years  now,  and  I've  been 
in  four  places.    I've  had  enough." 

"And  what  now?" 

"I  shall  stop  'ere  as  long  as  you  do." 

Something  in  her  tone,  a  greater  huskiness,  per- 
haps, surprised  him,  and  he  looked  up  at  her  and 
met  her  eyes  full.  He  was  confused  and  amazed 
and  startled,  and  his  heart  grew  big  within  him, 
but  he  could  not  turn  away.  In  her  expression  there 
was  a  mingling  of  fierce  strength,  defiance,  and  that 
helplessness  which  had  originally  overcome  him  and 
led  to  his  undoing.  He  was  frightened,  but  de- 
liciously,  so  that  he  liked  it. 

"I  didn't  know,"  she  said,  "that  uncle  drank. 
Father  drank,  too.  There  was  a  lot  in  our  street 
that  did.  I'm  not  frightened  of  many  things,  but 
I  am  of  that." 

He  resented  the  topic  on  her  lips  and,  by  way  of 
changing  the  subject,  suggested  that  she  should  read. 
She  turned  to  her  book  and  read  aloud  the  first  five 
pages  in  a  queer,  strained,  high-pitched  voice  that 
he  knew  for  a  product  of  the  Board  School,  where 
every  variance  of  the  process  called  education  is  a 
kind  of  stiff  drill.  When  she  came  to  the  end  of  a 
paragraph  he  took  the  book  and  read  to  her,  and 
she  listened  raptly,  for  his  diction  was  good.  After 
he  had  come  to  the  end  of  the  first  chapter  she 
asked  for  the  book  again  and  produced  a  rather 
mincing  but  wonderfully  accurate  copy  of  his  man- 

60 


PRELUDE 

ner.  She  did  not  wait  for  his  comment  but  banged 
the  book  shut,  threw  it  on  the  bed,  and  said: 

"That's  better.  I  knew  I  could  do  it.  I  knew  I 
was  clever.  .  .  .  You'll  stop  'ere  for  a  bit  when 
you're  better.  You  mustn't  mind  uncle.  I'll  be 
awfully  nice  to  you,  I  will.  I'll  be  a  servant  to  you 
and  make  you  comfortable,  and  I  won't  ask  for  no 
wages.  .  .  ." 

"My  dear  child,"  replied  Old  Mole,  "you  can't 
possibly  have  enjoyed  it  more  than  I." 

She  was  eager  on  that. 

"Did  you  really,  really  like  it?" 

"I  did  really." 


So  began  the  education  of  Matilda.  At  first  he 
drew  up,  for  his  own  use,  a  sort  of  curriculum — 
arithmetic,  algebra,  geography,  history,  literature, 
grammar,  orthography — and  a  time-table,  two 
hours  a  day  for  six  days  in  the  week,  but  he  very 
soon  found  that  she  absolutely  refused  to  learn 
anything  that  did  not  interest  her,  and  that  he  had 
to  adapt  his  time  to  hers.  Sometimes  she  would 
come  to  him  for  twenty  minutes;  sometimes  she 
would  devote  the  whole  afternoon  to  him.  When 
they  had  galloped  through  Oman's  "History  of 
England"  she  declined  to  continue  that  study,  and 
after  one  lesson  in  geography  she  burned  the  primer 
he  had  sent  her  out 'to  buy.  When  he  asked  her 
where  Ipswich  was  she  turned  it  over  in  her  mind, 
decided  that  it  had  a  foreign  sound  and  plumped 

61 


OLD    MOLE 

for  Germany.  She  did  not  seem  to  mind  in  the 
least  when  he  told  her  it  was  in  England,  in  the 
Eastern  Counties.  .  .  .  On  the  other  hand,  when 
he  procured  their  itinerary  for  the  next  few  months 
from  Mr.  Copas  and  marked  it  out  on  the  map  for 
her,  she  was  keenly  interested  and  he  seized  on  the 
occasion  to  point  out  Ipswich  and,  having  engaged 
her  attention,  all  the  county  towns  of  England  and 
Scotland. 

"Where  were  you  born?"  she  asked. 

He  found  the  village  in  Lincolnshire. 

"And  did  you  go  to  a  boarding-school  ?" 

He  pointed  to  Haileybury  and  then  to  Oxford. 
From  there  he  took  her  down  the  river  to  London, 
and  told  her  how  it  was  the  capital  of  the  greatest 
Empire  the  world  had  ever  seen,  and  how  the 
Mother  of  Parliaments  sat  by  the  river  and  made 
decrees  for  half  the  world,  and  how  the  King  lived 
in  an  ugly  palace  within  sight  of  the  Mother  of 
Parliaments,  and  how  it  was  the  greatest  of  ports, 
and  how  in  Westminster  Abbey  all  the  noblest 
of  men  lay  buried.  She  was  not  interested  and 
asked: 

"Where's  the  Crystal  Palace,  where  they  play 
the  Cup-tie?" 

He  did  not  know  where  in  London,  or  out  of  it, 
the  Crystal  Palace  might  be,  and  she  was  delighted 
to  find  a  gap  in  his  knowledge.  On  the  whole  she 
took  her  lessons  very  seriously,  and  he  found  that 
he  could  get  her  to  apply  herself  to  almost  any 
subject  if  he  promised  that  at  the  end  of  it  she  should 

6z 


PRELUDE 

be  allowed  to  read.  .  .  .  Teaching  under  these  cir- 
cumstances he  found  more  difficult  than  ever  he  had 
imagined  it  could  be.  In  his  Form-room  by  the  glass 
roof  of  the  gymnasium  he  had  been  backed  by  tra- 
dition, the  ground  had  been  prepared  for  him  in 
the  lower  Forms;  there  was  the  whole  complicated 
machinery  of  the  school  to  give  him  weight  and 
authority.  Further,  the  subjects  of  instruction  were 
settled  for  him  by  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Ex- 
amination Board.  Now  he  was  somewhat  nettled 
to  find  that,  though  he  might  draw  up  and  amend 
curricula,  he  was  more  and  more  forced  to  take  the 
nature  and  extent  of  his  teaching  from  his  pupil, 
who,  having  no  precise  object  in  view,  followed  only 
her  instinct,  and  that  seemed  to  bid  her  not  so  much 
to  lay  up  stores  of  knowledge  as  to  disencumber  her- 
self, to  throw  out  ballast,  everything  that  impeded 
the  buoyancy  of  her  nature. 

They  were  very  pleasant  hours  for  both  of  them, 
and  in  her  company  he  learned  to  give  as  little 
thought  to  the  future  as  she.  At  first,  after  he 
recovered,  he  fidgeted  because  there  were  no  let- 
ters. Day  after  day  passed  and  brought  him  no 
communication  from  the  outside  world.  Being  a 
member  of  many  committees  and  boards,  he  was 
used  to  a  voluminous  if  uninteresting  post.  How- 
ever, he  got  used  to  their  absence,  and  what  with 
work  in  the  theater  and  teaching  Matilda  he  had 
little  time  for  regret  or  anxiety.  He  had  been  up 
from  his  bed  a  whole  week  before  he  bought  a 
newspaper,  that  which  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of 

63 


OLD    MOLE 

reading  in  his  morning  train.  It  was  dull  and  only 
one  announcement  engaged  his  attention;  the  ad- 
vertisement of  the  school  setting  forth  the  fees  and 
the  opening  date  of  the  next  term — September  19. 
That  gave  him  four  weeks  in  which  freely  to  enjoy 
his  present  company.  Thereafter  surely  there 
would  be  investigation,  inquiry  for  him,  the  scandal 
would  reach  his  relatives  and  they  would — would 
they  not? — cause  a  search  for  him.  Till  then  he 
might  be  presumed  to  be  holiday-making. 

Meanwhile  he  had  grown  used  to  Mr.  Copas's 
manner  of  living — the  dirt,  the  untidiness,  the  coarse 
food,  the  long  listlessness  of  the  day,  the  excitement 
and  feverishness  of  the  evening.  Mrs.  Copas's  dis- 
figurements were  long  in  healing,  and  when  he  was 
well  enough  he  replaced  her  at  the  door  and  took 
the  money,  and  sold  the  grimy-thumbed  tickets  for 
the  front  seats.  He  sat  through  every  perform- 
ance and  became  acquainted  with  every  item  in  Mr. 
Copas's  repertory.  With  that  remarkable  person  he 
composed  a  version  of  "Iphigenia,"  for  from  his 
first  sketch  of  the  play  Mr.  Copas  had  had  his  eye 
on  Agamemnon  as  a  part  worthy  of  his  powers. 
Mr.  Mole  insisted  that  Matilda  should  play  the 
part  of  Iphigenia,  and  Mrs.  Copas  was  given  Cly- 
temnestra  wherewith  to  do  her  worst.  .  .  .  The 
only  portion  of  the  piece  that  was  written  was 
Iphigenia's  share  of  her  scenes  with  Agamemnon. 
These  Old  Mole  wrote  out  in  as  good  prose  as  he 
could  muster,  and  she  learned  them  by  heart.  Un- 
fortunately they  were  too  long  for  Mr.  Copas,  and 

64 


PRELUDE 

when  it  came  to  performance — there  were  only  two 
rehearsals — he  burst  into  them  with  his  gigantic 
voice  and  hailed  tirades  at  his  audience  about  the 
bitterness  of  ingratitude  in  a  fair  and  favorite 
daughter,  trounced  Clytemnestra  for  the  lamentable 
upbringing  she  had  given  their  child,  and,  in  the 
end,  deprived  Iphigenia  of  the  luxury  of  slaughter 
by  falling  on  his  sword  and  crying: 

"Thus  like  a  Roman  and  a  most  unhappy  father 
I  die  of  thrice  and  doubly  damned,  self-inflicted 
wounds.  By  my  example  let  all  men,  especially  my 
daughter,  know  there  is  a  canon  fixed  against  self- 
slaughter." 

He  made  nonsense  of  the  whole  thing,  but  it  was 
wonderfully  effective.  So  far  as  it  was  at  all  lucid 
the  play  seemed  to  represent  Agamemnon  as  a 
wretched  man  driven  to  a  miserable  end  by  a  shrew- 
ish wife  and  daughter. 

Much  the  same  fate  attended  Mr.  Mole's  other 
contribution  to  the  repertory,  a  Napoleonic  drama 
in  which  Mr.  Copas  figured — immensely  to  his  own 
satisfaction — as  the  Corsican  torn  between  an 
elderly  and  stout  Marie  Louise  and  a  youthful  and 
declamatory  Josephine.  Through  five  acts  Mr. 
Copas  raged  and  stormed  up  and  down  the  Em- 
peror's career,  had  scenes  with  Josephine  and  Marie 
Louise  when  he  felt  like  it,  confided  his  troubles 
and  ambitions  to  Murat  when  he  wanted  a  rest  from 
his  ranting,  sacked  countries,  cities,  ports  as  easily 
and  neatly  as  you  or  I  might  pocket  the  red  at 
billiards,  made  ponderous  love  to  the  golden-haired 

65 


OLD    MOLE 

lady  of  the  Court,  introduced  comic  scenes  with  the 
lugubrious  young  man,  wept  over  the  child,  dressed 
up  as  L'Aiglon,  whom  he  called  "Little  Boney," 
banished  Josephine  from  the  Court,  and  died  on 
the  battlefield  of  Waterloo  yielding  up  his  sword 
to  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  represented  by  Mr. 
Mole,  his  first  appearance  upon  any  stage,  with  this 
farewell : 

"My  last  word  to  England  is — be  good  to  Jose- 
phine." 

It  was  the  Theater  Royal's  most  successful  piece. 
The  inhabitants  of  that  little  Staffordshire  town  had 
heard  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  they  ap- 
plauded him  to  the  echo.  Every  night  when  they 
played  that  stirring  drama,  after  Mr.  Copas  had 
taken  his  fill  of  the  applause,  there  were  calls  for 
the  Duke,  and  Mr.  Mole  would  appear  leading 
Josephine  by  the  hand. 

At  the  top  of  their  success  Mr.  Copas  decided 
to  move  on. 

uIn  this  business,"  he  said,  "you  have  to  know 
when  to  go.  You  have  to  leave  'em  ripe  for  the 
next  visit,  and  go  away  and  squeeze  another  orange. 
I  said  to  Mrs.  Copas,  the  night  you  came,  that  you 
looked  like  luck.  You've  done  it.  If  you'll  stay, 
sir,  I'll  give  you  a  pound  a  week.  You're  a  nartist, 
you  are.  That  Wellington  bit  of  yours  without  a 
word  to  say — d'you  know  what  we  call  that?  We 
call  that  'olding  the  stage.  It  takes  a  nartist  to  do 
that." 

Mr.  Mole  took  this  praise  with  becoming  mod- 

66 


PRELUDE 

esty  and  said  that  he  would  stay,  for  the  present. 
Then  he  added: 

"And  about  Matilda?" 

"She's  my  own  niece,"  replied  Mr.  Copas,  "but  I 
don't  mind  telling  you  that  she's  not  a  bit  o'  good. 
She  ain't  got  the  voice.  She  ain't  got  the  fizzikew. 
When  there's  a  bit  o'  real  acting  to  be  done,  she 
isn't  there.  She  just  isn't  there.  There's  a  hole 
where  she  ought  to  be.  I'm  bothered  about  that 
girl,  I  am,  bothered.     She  doesn't  earn  her  keep." 

"I  thought  she  was  very  charming." 

"Pretty  and  all  that,  but  that's  not  acting.  Set 
her  against  Mrs.  Copas  and  where  is  she?" 

Mr.  Mole's  own  private  opinion  was  that  on  the 
stage  Mrs.  Copas  was  repulsive.  However,  he  kept 
that  to  himself.    Very  quietly  he  said: 

"If  Matilda  goes,  I  go." 

Mr.  Copas  looked  very  mysterious  and  winked 
at  him  vigorously.  Then  he  grinned  and  held  out  a 
dirty  hand. 

"Put  it  there,  my  boy,  put  it  there.  What's 
yours?" 

Within  half  an  hour  he  had  coaxed  another  ten 
pounds  out  of  Mr.  Mole's  pocket  and  Matilda's 
tenure  of  the  part  of  Josephine  was  guaranteed. 


At  their  next  stopping-place,  on  the  outskirts  of 

the  Pottery  towns,  disaster  awaited  the  company. 

A  wheel  of  the  caravan  jammed  as  they  were  going 

down  a  hill  and  delayed  them  for  some  hours,  so 

x  67 


OLD   MOLE 

that  they  arrived  too  late  in  the  evening  to  give  a 
performance.  Mr.  Copas  insisted  that  the  theater 
should  be  erected,  and  lashed  his  assistants  with 
bitter  and  blasphemous  words,  so  that  they  became 
excited  and  flurried  and  made  a  sad  muddle  of 
their  work.  When  at  last  it  was  finished  and  Mr. 
Copas  went  out  himself  to  post  up  his  bills  on  the 
walls  of  the  neighborhood,  where  of  all  places  he 
regarded  his  fame  as  most  secure,  he  had  got  no 
farther  than  the  corner  of  the  square  when  he  came 
on  a  gleaming  white  building  that  looked  as  though 
it  were  made  of  icing  sugar,  glittering  and  dazzling 
with  electric  light  and  plastered  all  over  with  lurid 
pictures  of  detectives  and  criminals  and  passionate 
men  and  women  in  the  throes  of  amorous  catas- 
trophes and  dilemmas.  He  stopped  outside  this 
place  and  stared  it  up  and  down,  gave  it  his  most 
devastating  fore-and-aft  look,  and  uttered  one  word : 

"Blast!" 

Then  unsteadily  he  made  for  the  door  of  the 
public-house  adjoining  it  and  called  for  the  land- 
lord, whom  he  had  known  twenty  years  and  more. 
From  the  platform  of  the  theater  Mrs.  Copas  saw 
him  go  in,  and  she  rushed  to  find  Mr.  Mole,  and 
implored  him  to  deliver  her  husband  from  the  seven 
devils  who  would  assuredly  possess  him  unless  he 
were  speedily  rescued  and  sent  a-billposting. 

Mr.  Mole  obeyed,  and  found  the  actor  storming 
at  the  publican,  asking  him  how  he  dare  take  the 
bread  from  the  belly  and  the  air  from  the  nostrils 
of  a  nartist  with  a  lot  o'  dancing  dotty  pictures. 

6$ 


PRELUDE 

With  difficulty  Mr.  Copas  was  soothed  and  pla- 
cated. He  had  ordered  a  glass  of  beer  in  order  to 
give  himself  a  status  in  the  house,  and  the  publican 
would  not  let  him  pay  for  it.  Whereupon  he  spilled 
it  on  the  sanded  floor  and  stalked  out.  Mr.  Mole 
followed  him  and  found  him  brooding  over  a  poster 
outside  the  "kinema"  which  represented  a  lady  in 
the  act  of  saving  her  child  from  a  burning  hotel. 
He  seized  his  paste-pot,  took  out  a  bill  from  his 
satchel,  and  covered  the  heads  of  the  lady  and 
her  child  with  the  announcement  of  his  own  arrival 
with  new  plays  and  a  brilliant  and  distinguished 
company. 

When  he  was  safely  round  the  corner  he  seized 
his  companion  by  the  arm  and  said  excitedly: 

"Ruining  the  country  they  are  with  them  things. 
Last  time  I  pitched  opposite  one  o'  them,  when  they 
ought  to  have  been  working  my  own  company  was 
in  there  watching  the  pictures." 

"I  have  always  understood,"  replied  Mr.  Mole, 
"that  they  have  a  considerable  educational  value, 
and  certainly  it  seems  to  me  that  through  them  the 
people  can  come  by  a  more  accurate  knowledge  of 
the  countries  and  customs  of  the  world  than  by 
reading  or  verbal  instruction." 

Mr.  Copas  snorted: 

"Have  you  seen  'em?" 

"No."  ' 

"Then  talk  when  you  have.  I  say  it's  ruining  the 
country  and  pampering  the  public.  Who  wants  to 
know  about  the  countries  and  customs  of  the  world? 

69 


OLD    MOLE 

What  men  and  women  want  to  know  is  the  workings 
of  the  human  heart." 

Unexpectedly  Mr.  Mole  found  himself  reduced 
to  triteness.  The  only  comment  that  presented  it- 
self to  his  mind  was  that  the  human  heart  was  a 
mystery  beyond  knowing,  but  that  did  not  allow 
him  to  controvert  the  actor's  dictum  that  no  one 
wanted  to  know  about  the  countries  and  customs  of 
the  world,  and  he  wondered  whether  the  kinemato- 
graph  did,  in  fact,  convey  a  more  accurate  impres- 
sion of  the  wonders  of  the  world  than  Hakluyt  or 
Sir  John  Mandeville,  who  did,  at  any  rate,  present 
the  results  of  their  travels  and  inventions  with  that 
pride  in  both  truth  and  lying  which  begets  style. 

He  determined  to  visit  the  kinematograph,  and 
after  he  and  Mr.  Copas  had  completed  their  round 
and  made  it  possible  for  a  large  number  of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Potteries  to  become  aware  of  their 
existence,  he  returned  to  the  Theater  Royal  and 
fetched  Matilda.  They  paid  threepence  each  and 
sat  in  the  best  seats  in  the  middle  of  the  hall,  where 
they  were  regaled  with  a  Wild  West  melodrama, 
an  adventure  of  Max  Linder,  a  Shakespearean  pro- 
duction by  a  famous  London  actor,  a  French  drama 
of  love  and  money,  and  a  picture  of  bees  making 
honey  in  their  hive.  Matilda  liked  the  bees  and 
the  horses  in  the  Wild  West  melodrama.  When 
Max  Linder  climbed  into  a  piano  and  the  hammers 
hit  him  on  the  nose  and  eyes  she  laughed;  but  she 
said  the  French  drama  was  silly,  and  as  for  the 
Shakespearean  production  she  said: 

70 


PRELUDE 

"You  can't  follow  the  play,  but  I  suppose  it's 
good  for  you." 

"How  do  you  mean — good  for  you?" 
"I  mean  you  don't  really  like  it,  but  there's  a  lot 
of  it,  and  a  lot  of  people,  and  the  dresses  are  lovely. 
It  doesn't  get  hold  of  you  like  uncle  does  some- 
times." 

"Your  uncle  says  the  kinemas   are   ruining  the 
country." 

"Oh!     He  only  means  they're  making  business 
bad  for  him." 

"Your  uncle  says  you'll  never  make  an  actress, 
Matilda." 
"Does  he?" 

(Some  one  behind  them  said  "Ssh!" 
"Ssh  yourself,"  retorted  Matilda.     "There  ain't 
nothing  to  hear.") 

"Does  he?"  she  said.  "What  do  you  think?" 
"I'm  afraid  I  don't  know  much  about  it." 
For  the  first  time  he  noted  that  when  he  was  with 
Matilda  his  brain  worked  in  an  entirely  novel  fash- 
ion. It  was  no  longer  cool  and  fastidiously  analyti- 
cal, seizing  on  things  and  phenomena  from  the  out- 
side, but  strangely  excited  and  heated,  athletic  and 
full  of  energy  and  almost  rapturously  curious  about 
the  inside  of  things  and  their  relation  one  with  an- 
other. For  instance,  he  had  hitherto  regarded  the 
kinematograph  as  a  sort  of  disease  that  had  broken 
out  all  over  the  face  of  the  world,  but  now  his  newly 
working  mind,  his  imagination — that  was  the  word 
for  it — saw  it  as  human  effort,  as  a  thing  controlled 

7* 


OLD    MOLE 

by  human  wills  to  meet  human  demands.  It  did 
not  satisfy  his  own  demand,  nor  apparently  did  it 
satisfy  Matilda's.  For  the  rest  of  the  audience  he 
would  not  venture  to  decide.  Indeed  he  gave  little 
thought  to  them,  for  he  was  entirely  absorbed  by 
the  wonder  of  the  miracle  that  had  come  to  him, 
the  new  vision  of  life,  the  novel  faculty  of  appre- 
hension. He  was  in  a  state  of  ferment  and  could 
not  sort  his  impressions  and  ideas,  but  he  was  quite 
marvelously  interested  in  himself,  and,  casting 
about  for  expression  of  it  all,  he  remembered 
stories  of  seeds  buried  for  years  under  mighty  build- 
ings in  cities  and  how  when  the  buildings  were  pulled 
down  those  seeds  put  forth  with  new  vigor  and 
came  to  flower.  So  (he  said  to  himself)  it  had 
been  with  him.  Excitedly  he  turned  to  Matilda  and 
said: 

"About  this  acting.  Do  you  yourself  think  you 
can  do  it?" 

'Tm  sure  I  can." 

"Then  you  shall." 

The  lights  in  the  hall  went  up  to  indicate  the  end 
of  the  cycle  of  pictures. 


All  that  night  and  through  the  next  day  his  exal- 
tation continued,  and  then  suddenly  it  vanished, 
leaving  him  racked  by  monstrous  doubts.  His 
mind,  the  full  exercise  of  which  had  given  him  such 
thrilling  delight,  seemed  to  become  parched  and 
shriveled  as  a  dried  pea.     Where  had  been  held 

72 


PRELUDE 

out  for  him  the  promise  of  fine  action  was  now  dark- 
ness, and  he  sank  deeper  and  deeper  into  a  muddy 
inertia.  Fear  possessed  him  and  brought  him  to 
agony,  dug  into  his  sides  with  its  spur,  drove  him 
floundering  on,  and  when  out  of  the  depths  of  his 
soul  he  strove  to  squeeze  something  of  that  soar- 
ing energy  that  had  visited  him  or  been  struck  out 
of  him  (he  knew  not  which  it  was)  he  could  sum- 
mon nothing  more  powerful  to  his  aid  than  anger. 
He  wept  tears  of  anger — anger  at  the  world,  at 
himself,  and  the  blind,  aimless  force  of  events,  at 
his  own  impotence  to  move  out  of  the  bog,  at  the 
folly  and  obstinacy  which  had  led  him  to  submit 
to  the  affront  that  had  been  put  upon  him  by  men 
who  for  years  had  been  his  colleagues  and  com- 
rades. His  anger  was  blown  to  a  white  heat  by  dis- 
gust when  he  looked  back  and  counted  the  years 
he  had  spent  in  fatted  security  mechanically  plying 
a  mechanical  profession,  shut  out  by  habit  and  cus- 
tom from  both  imaginative  power  and  the  impo- 
tence of  exhaustion.  He  raged  and  stormed  and 
blubbered,  and  he  marveled  at  the  commotion  going 
on  within  him  as  he  pursued  his  daily  tasks,  read 
aloud  with  Matilda,  argued  with  Mr.  Copas,  took 
money  at  the  door  of  the  theater  in  the  evening,  sat 
among  the  dirty,  smelling,  loutish  audience.  In  his 
bitterness  he  found  a  sort  of  comfort  in  reverting 
to  his  old  bantering  attitude  toward  women,  to 
find  it  a  thousand  times  intensified.  More  than 
half  the  audience  were  women,  poor  women,  meanly 
dressed,  miserably  corseted;  the  fat  women  bulged 

73 


OLD   MOLE 

and  heaved  out  of  their  corsets,  and  the  thin  women 
looked  as  though  they  had  been  dropped  into  theirs 
and  were  only  held  up  by  their  armpits.  There 
they  sat,  hunched  and  bunched,  staring,  gaping,  gig- 
gling, moping,  chattering,  chattering  .  .  .  Ach! 
They  were  silly. 

And  the  men?  God  save  us!  these  sodden,  stu- 
pid clods  were  men.  They  slouched  and  sprawled 
and  yawned  and  spat.  Their  hands  were  dirty, 
their  teeth  yellow,  and  their  speech  was  thick, 
clipped,  guttural,  inhuman.  .  .  .  Driven  on  by  a 
merciless  logic  he  was  forced  into  consideration  of 
himself.  As  he  sat  there  at  the  end  of  the  front 
row  he  turned  his  hands  over  and  over;  fat,  stumpy 
hands  they  were,  and  he  put  them  up  and  felt  the 
fleshiness  of  his  neck,  the  bushy  hair  growing  out 
of  his  ears,  and  he  ran  them  along  his  plump 
legs  and  prodded  the  stoutness  of  his  belly.  He 
laughed  at  himself.  He  laughed  at  the  whole  lot 
of  them.  And  he  tried  to  remember  a  single  man 
or  a  single  woman  whom  he  had  encountered  in 
his  life  and  could  think  of  as  beautiful.  Not 
one. 

He  turned  his  attention  to  the  stage.  Copas  was 
almost  a  dwarf,  a  strutting,  conceited  little  dwarf, 
pouring  out  revolting  nonsense,  a  hideous  caricature 
of  human  beings  who  were  the  caricatures  of  crea- 
tion.   He  said  to  himself: 

"I  must  get  out  of  this." 

And  he  found  himself  using  a  phrase  he  had  em- 
ployed for  years  in  dealing  with  small  boys  who 

74 


PRELUDE 

produced  slovenly  work  and  wept  when  he  railed  at 
them: 

"Tut!    Tut!    This  will  never  do !" 

At  that  he  gasped.  He  was  using  the  phrase  to 
himself !  He  was  therefore  like  a  small  boy  in  the 
presence  of  outraged  authority,  and  that  authority 
was  (words  came  rushing  in  on  him)  his  own  con- 
science, his  own  essence,  liberated,  demanding,  here 
and  now,  among  men  and  women  as  they  are,  the 
very  fullness  of  life. 

He  had  not  regained  his  mood  of  delight,  but 
rather  had  reached  the  limit  of  despair,  had  ceased 
blindly  and  uselessly  to  struggle,  but  cunningly,  cau- 
tiously began  to  urge  his  way  out  of  his  despond. 
Whatever  happened,  he  must  move  forward.  What- 
ever happened,  he  must  know,  discover,  reach  out 
and  grasp. 

And  he  blessed  the  illumination  that  had  come  to 
him,  blessed  also  the  blackness  and  misery  into 
which,  incontinently,  he  had  fallen.  He  submitted 
to  exhaustion  and  was  content  to  await  an  accre- 
tion of  energy. 

Thereafter,  for  a  little  while,  he  found  himself 
more  akin  to  Mr.  Copas,  drank  with  him,  cracked 
jokes  with  him,  walked  with  him  and  listened  to 
his  talk.  He  began  to  appreciate  Mrs.  Copas  and 
to  understand  that  being  beaten  by  a  man  is  not 
incompatible  with  a  genuine  affection  and  sympathy 
for  him.  He  speculated  not  at  all,  and  more  than 
ever  his  instruction  of  Matilda  became  dependent 
upon  her  caprice. 

75 


OLD   MOLE 

Her  uncle  now  gave  her  a  salary  of  five  shillings 
a  week  and  upon  her  first  payment  she  went  out 
and  bought  a  cigar  for  her  mentor.  She  gave  three 
half-pence  for  it  and  he  smoked  it  and  she  wore 
the  band  on  her  little  finger.  To  guard  against 
such  presents  in  the  future  he  bought  himself  a  box 
of  fifty  Manilas. 

Mrs.  Copas  began  to  sound  him  as  to  his  re- 
sources. Losing  patience  with  his  evasions  she 
asked  him  at  last  bluntly  if  he  were  rich.  He  turned 
his  cigar  round  his  tongue  and  said: 

"It  depends  what  you  mean  by  rich." 

"Well,"  she  replied  cautiously,  feeling  her  ground, 
"could  you  lay  your  hands  on  fifty  pounds  without 
selling  anything?" 

"Certainly  I  could,  or  a  hundred." 

"A  hundred  pounds!" 

Her  eyes  and  mouth  made  three  round  O's  and 
she  was  silenced. 

Both  were  astonished  and  both  sat,  rather 
awkwardly,  adjusting  their  financial  standards.  She 
took  up  her  knitting  and  he  plied  his  cigar.  They 
were  sitting  on  boxes  outside  the  stage  door  in  the 
warm  August  sunlight.  She  gave  a  discreet  little 
cough  and  said: 

"You  don't  .  .  .  you  didn't  .  .  .  have  a  wife,  did 
you?" 

"No.     I  have  never  had  a  wife." 

"Think  of  that  now.  .  .  .  You'd  have  a  house* 
keeper  maybe?" 

"A  married  couple  looked  after  me." 

76 


PRELUDE 

"Well,  I  never!  Well,  there's  never  any  know- 
ing, is  there?" 

He  had  learned  by  this  time  that  there  was  noth- 
ing at  all  behind  Mrs.  Copas's  cryptic  utterances. 
If  there  were  anything  she  could  arrive  at  it  by  cir- 
cumlocution, and  in  her  own  good  time  would  make 
it  plain.  Her  next  remark  might  have  some  con- 
nection with  her  previous  train  of  thought  or  it 
might  not.     She  said  in  a  toneless,  detached  voice: 

"And  to  think  of  you  turning  up  with  our  Ma- 
tilda. And  they  do  say  how  everything's  for  the 
best.  .  .  .  It's  a  pity  business  is  so  bad  here,  isn't 
it?" 


Business  was  very  bad.  The  faithful  few  of  the 
district  who  always  patronized  Mr.  Copas  year  after 
year  attended,  but  they  amounted  to  no  more  than 
fifty,  while  the  young  people  were  drawn  off  by  the 
kinematograph.  They  even  sank  so  far  as  to  ad- 
mit children  free  for  three  nights  in  the  hope  that 
their  chatter  would  incite  their  parents  to  come  and 
share  the  wonders  they  had  seen.  On  the  fourth 
night  only  four  old  women  and  a  boy  paid  for  ad- 
mission. 

The .  situation  was  saved  by  a  publican  on  the 
other  side  of  the  square  who,  envious  of  his  rival's 
successful  enterprise  with  the  kinematograph,  hired 
the  theater  for  a  week's  boxing  display,  by  his 
nephew,  who  was  an  ex-champion  of  the  Midlands 
with  a  broken  nose  and  reputation. 

77 


OLD   MOLE 

That  week  was  one  of  the  most  miserable  depres- 
sion. Mr.  Copas  drank  freely.  Mrs.  Copas  never 
stopped  chatting,  the  company  demanded  their  sal- 
aries up  to  date,  accepted  a  compromise  and  dis- 
appeared, and  the  ex-champion  of  the  Midlands 
took  a  fancy  to  Matilda.  He  followed  her  in  the 
streets,  sent  her  half-pounds  of  caramels,  accosted 
her  more  than  once  and  asked  her  if  she  did  not 
want  a  new  hat,  and  when  she  snubbed  him  de- 
manded loudly  to  know  what  a  pretty  girl  like  her 
was  doing  without  a  lad.  Chivalrously,  not  with- 
out a  tremor,  Mr.  Mole  offered  himself  as  her  es- 
cort in  her  walks  abroad.  They  were  invariably 
followed  by  the  boxer  whistling  and  shouting  at  in- 
tervals. Sometimes  he  would  lag  behind  them  and 
embark  upon  a  long  detailed  and  insulting  descrip- 
tion of  Mr.  Mole's  back  view;  sometimes  he  would 
hurry  ahead,  look  round  and  leer  and  make  un- 
pleasant noises  with  his  lips  or  contemptuous  ges- 
tures with  his  hands. 

Matilda  had  found  a  certain  spot  by  a  canal 
where  it  passed  out  of  the  town  and  made  a  bee- 
line  across  the  country.  There  was  a  bridge  over 
a  sluice  which  marked  the  cleavage  between  the 
sweet  verdure  of  the  fields  and  the  soiled  growth 
of  the  outskirts  of  the  town.  It  was  a  lonely  ro- 
mantic spot  and  she  wished  to  visit  it  again  before 
they  left.  She  explained  to  her  friend  that  she 
wanted  to  be  alone  but  dared  not  because  of  her 
pursuer,  and  her  friend  agreed  to  leave  her  on  the 
bridge  and  to  lurk  within  sight  and  earshot. 

78 


PRELUDE 

They  had  to  go  by  tram.  The  boxer  was  twenty 
yards  behind  them.  They  hurried  on,  mounted  the 
tram  just  as  it  was  starting,  and  congratulated  them- 
selves on  having  avoided  him.  When  they  reached 
the  bridge  there  he  was  sitting  on  the  parapet, 
whistling  and  leering.  Matilda  flamed  scarlet  and 
turned  to  go.  Boiling  with  fury  Old  Mole  hunched 
up  his  shoulders,  tucked  down  his  head  (the  attitude 
familiar  to  so  many  Thrigsbians),  and  bore  down 
on  the  offender.     He  grunted  out: 

"Be  off." 

"'Ave  you  bought  the  bally  bridge  ?" 

And  he  grinned.  The  coarseness  and  beastliness 
of  the  creature  revolted  Mr.  Mole,  roused  him  to 
such  a  pitch  of  furious  disgust,  that  he  lost  all  sense 
of  what  he  was  doing,  raised  his  stick,  struck  out, 
caught  the  fellow  in  the  chest  and  sent  him  toppling 
over  into  the  pool.  He  leaned  over  the  parapet  and 
watched  the  man  floundering  and  splashing  and 
gulping  and  spitting  and  cursing,  saw  his  face  turn 
greeny  white  with  hard  terror,  but  was  entirely  un- 
moved until  he  felt  Matilda's  hand  on  his  arm  and 
heard  her  blubbering  and  crying: 

"He's  drowning!     He's  drowning!" 

Then  he  rushed  down  and  lay  on  his  stomach  on 
the  bank  and  held  out  his  stick,  further,  further,  as 
far  as  he  could  reach,  until  the  lout  in  the  water 
clutched  it.  The  boxer  had  lost  his  head.  He 
tugged  at  the  stick  and  it  looked  for  a  moment  as 
though  there  would  be  two  men  in  the  water.  It 
was   a   question  which  would  first  be   exhausted. 

79 


OLD   MOLE 

Grayer  and  grayer  and  more  distorted  grew  the 
boxer's  face,  redder  and  redder  and  more  swollen 
Old  Mole's,  until  at  last  the  strain  relaxed  and  Ma- 
tilda's tormentor  was  drawn  into  shallow  water  and 
out  on  to  the  bank.  There  he  lay  drenched,  hic- 
coughing, spitting,  concerned  entirely  with  his  own 
discomfort  and  giving  never  a  thought  either  to  the 
object  of  his  desires  or  his  assailant  and  rescuer.  At 
last  he  shook  himself  like  a  dog,  squeezed  the  water 
out  of  his  sleeves,  sprang  to  his  feet  and  was  off  like 
a  dart  along  the  towpath  in  the  direction  of  the  tall 
fuming  chimneys  of  the  town. 

Matilda  and  Old  Mole  walked  slowly  out  to- 
ward the  setting  sun  and  in  front  of  them  for  miles 
stretched  the  regiments  of  pollarded  willows  like 
mournful  distorted  human  beings  condemned  for- 
ever to  stand  and  watch  over  the  still  waters. 

"Life,"  said  Old  Mole,  "is  full  of  astonishments. 
I  should  never  have  thought  it  of  myself." 

"He  was  very  nearly  drowned,"  rejoined  Ma- 
tilda. 

"It  is  very  singular,"  said  he,  more  to  himself 
than  to  her,  "that  one's  instinct  should  think  such  a 
life  worth  saving.  A  more  bestial  face  I  never 
saw." 

"I  think,"  said  she,  "you  would  help  anybody 
whatever  they  were  like." 

She  took  his  arm  and  they  walked  on,  as  it 
seemed,  into  the  darkness.  Until  they  turned, 
neither  spoke.     He  said: 

"I  am  oddly  miserable  when  I  think  that  in  a  fort- 

80 


PRELUDE 

night  the  school  will  reopen  and  I  shall  not  be  there. 
I  suppose  it's  habit,  but  I  want  to  go  back  and  I 
know  I  never  shall." 

"I  don't  want  never  to  go  back." 

"Don't  you?  But  then  you're  young  and  I'm 
rather  old." 

"I  don't  think  of  you  as  old.  I  always  think  of 
you  as  some  one  very  good  and  sometimes  you  make 
me  laugh." 

"Oh!  Matilda,  often,  very  often,  you  make  me 
want  to  cry.     And  men  don't  cry." 

A  little  scornfully  Matilda  answered: 

"ZW/they!" 

Through  his  mournfulness  he  felt  a  glow  of  hap- 
piness, a  little  aching  in  his  heart,  a  sort  of  longing 
and  a  pleasant  pride  in  this  excursion  with  a  young 
woman  clinging  to  his  arm  and  treating  him  with 
sweet  consideration  and  tenderness. 

"After  all,"  he  thought,  "it  is  certainly  true  that 
when  they  reach  middle  age  men  do  require  an  in- 
terest in  some  young  life." 

So,  having  fished  out  a  theory,  as  he  thought,  to 
meet  the  case,  he  was  quite  content  and  prepared, 
untroubled,  to  enjoy  his  happiness. 

He  did  thoroughly  enjoy  his  happiness.  His 
newly  awakened  but  unpracticed  imagination  worked 
like  that  of  a  sentimental  and  self-cloistered  writer 
who,  having  no  conception  of  human  relationships, 
binds  labels  about  the  necks  of  his  personages — 
Innocent  Girlhood,  Middle-aged  Bachelorhood, 
Mother's  Love,  Manly  Honor,  English  Gentleman 

81 


OLD    MOLE 

— and  amuses  himself  and  his  readers  with  prop- 
ping them  up  in  the  attitudes  meet  and  right  to  their 
affixed  characters.  Except  that  he  did  not  drag 
the  Deity  into  it,  Old  Mole  lived  perfectly  for  a 
short  space  of  time  in  a  neatly  rounded  novelette, 
with  himself  as  the  touching,  lamb-like  hero  and  Ma- 
tilda as  the  radiant  heroine.  He  basked  in  it,  and 
when  on  her  he  let  loose  a  flood  of  what  he  thought 
to  be  emotion  she  only  said: 

"Oh!    Goon!" 

True  to  his  sentimentality  he  was  entirely  uncon- 
scious of,  absolutely  unconcerned  with,  what  she 
might  be  feeling.  He  only  knew  that  he  had  been 
battered  and  bewildered  and  miserable  and  that  now 
he  was  comfortable  and  at  his  ease. 

The  appointed  end  of  all  such  things,  in  print 
and  out  of  it,  is  marriage.  Outside  marriage  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  affection  between  man  and 
woman  (in  that  atmosphere  passion  and  desire  do 
not  exist  and  children  are  not  born  but  just  crop 
up).  True  to  his  fiction — and  how  many  men  are 
ever  true  to  anything  else? — Old  Mole  came  in 
less  than  a  week  to  the  idea  of  marriage  with  Ma- 
tilda. It  was  offensive  to  his  common  sense,  so 
repugnant  indeed  that  it  almost  shocked  him  back 
into  the  world  of  fact  and  that  hideous  mental  and 
spiritual  flux  from  which  he  was  congratulating  him- 
self on  having  escaped.  He  held  his  nose  and 
gulped  it  down  and  sighed: 

"Ah!    Let  us  not  look  on  the  dark  side  of  life  I" 

Then  he  asked  himself : 

82 


PRELUDE 

"Do  I  love  her?  She  has  young  dreams  of  love. 
How  can  I  give  her  my  love  and  not  shatter  them?" 

And  much  more  in  this  egoistic  strain  he  said, 
the  disturbance  in  his  heart,  or  whatever  organ 
may  be  the  seat  of  the  affections,  having  totally  up- 
set his  sense  of  humor.  He  told  himself,  of  course, 
that  she  was  hardly  the  wife  for  a  man  of  his  posi- 
tion, but  that  was  only  by  way  of  peppering  his  emo- 
tions, and  he  was  really  rather  amazed  when  he 
came  to  the  further  reflection  that,  after  all,  he  had 
no  position.  To  avoid  the  consternation  it  brought 
he  decided  to  ask  Matilda's  hand  in  marriage. 


As  it  turned  out,  to  the  utter  devastation  of  his 
novelette,  it  was  his  hand  that  was  asked. 

He  bought  Matilda  a  new  camisole.  He  had 
heard  the  word  used  by  women  and  was  rather  stag- 
gered when  he  found  what  it  was  he  had  purchased. 
Confusedly  he  presented  it  to  Innocent  Girlhood. 
She  giggled  and  then,  with  a  shout  of  laughter, 
rushed  off  to  show  Mrs.  Copas  her  gift.  He  did 
not  on  that  occasion  stammer  out  his  proposal. 

He  took  her  for  three  walks  and  two  tram-drives 
at  fourpence  each,  but  she  was  preoccupied  and 
morose,  and  gave  such  vague  answers  to  his  pre- 
liminary remarks  that  his  hopes  died  within  him 
and  he  discussed  the  Insurance  Act  and  Lancashire's 
chances  of  defeating  Yorkshire  at  Bradford.  More- 
over, Matilda  was  pale  and  drawn  and  not  far  from 
being  downright  ugly,  far  too  plain  for  a  novelette 

83 


OLD   MOLE 

at  all  events.  He  felt  himself  sliding  backward 
and  could  hear  the  buzz  and  roar  of  the  chaos 
within  himself,  and  the  novelette  was  unfinished  and 
until  he  came  to  the  last  jaunting  little  hope  in  the 
future,  the  last  pat  on  the  back  for  the  hero,  the 
final  distribution  of  sugar-plums  all  round,  there 
would  be  no  sort  of  security,  no  staled  circle  wherein 
to  dwell.  He  felt  sick,  and  the  nausea  that  came  on 
him  was  worse  than  the  fear  and  doubt  through 
which  he  had  passed.  He  was  like  a  man  after  a 
long  journey  come  hungry  to  an  inn  to  find  nothing 
to  eat  but  lollipops. 


When  they  returned  from  their  last  tram-drive 
they  had  supper  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Copas,  who 
discussed  the  new  actors  whom  they  had  engaged, 
as  only  two  of  the  old  company  were  willing  to  re- 
turn. The  new  comic  had  acted  in  London,  in  the 
West  End,  had  once  made  his  twenty  pounds  a 
week.  They  were  proud  of  him,  and  Mr.  Copas 
unblushingly  denounced  the  Drink  as  the  undoing 
of  many  a  nartist.  Very  early  in  the  evening,  be- 
fore any  move  had  been  made  to  clear  the  plates 
and  dishes  away,  Matilda  declared  herself  tired, 
and  withdrew.  Mr.  Copas  went  on  talking  and 
Mrs.  Copas  began  to  make  horrible  faces  at  him, 
so  that  Old  Mole,  in  the  vagueness  of  his  acute  dis- 
comfort, thought  mistily  that  perhaps  they  were  at 
the  beginning  of  an  altercation,  which  would  end — 
as  their  altercations  ended.    However,  the  talk  went 

84 


PRELUDE 

on  and  the  grimaces  went  on  until  at  last  Mr.  Copas 
perceived  that  he  was  the  object  of  them,  stopped 
dead,  seized  his  hat  and  left  the  room.  Mrs.  Copas 
beamed  on  Mr.  Mole.  She  leaned  back  in  her  chair 
and  folded  her  arms.  They  were  bare  to  the  elbow 
and  fat  and  coarse  and  red.  She  went  on  beaming, 
and  nervously  he  took  out  a  cigar  and  lit  it.  Mrs. 
Copas  leaned  forward  and  with  a  knife  began  to 
draw  patterns  with  the  mustard  left  on  the  edge  of 
a  plate. 

"We'll  be  on  the  move  again  soon,  Mr.  Mole." 

"I  shall  be  glad  of  that." 

"What  we  want  to  know,  what  I  want  to  know 
and  what  Mr.  Copas  wants  to  know  is  this.  What 
are  you  going  to  do  about  it?" 

"I  ...  I  suppose  I  shall  go  with  you." 

"You  know  what  I  mean,  Mr.  Mole.  Some  folk 
ain't  particular.  I  am.  And  Mr.  Copas  is  very 
careful  about  what  happens  in  his  theater.  If  it 
can't  be  legitimate  it  can't  be  and  there's  nothing 
more  to  be  said.  .  .  .  Now,  Mr.  Mole,  what  are 
you  going  to  do?" 

"My  good  woman !  I  haven't  the  least  idea  what 
you  are  talking  about.  I  have  enjoyed  my  stay  with 
you.  I  have  found  it  very  instructive  and  profit- 
able and  I  propose  to " 

"It's  Matilda,  Mr.  Mole.  What's  done  is  done. 
We're  not  saying  anything  about  that.  Some  says 
it's  a  curse  and  some  says  it's  the  only  thing  worth 
living  for.  Matilda's  my  own  husband's  niece  and 
I've  got  to  see  her  properly  done  by  whether  you're 

85 


OLD   MOLE 

offended  with  a  little  plain  speaking  or  not,  Mr. 
Mole." 

She  had  now  traced  a  very  passable  spider's  web 
in  mustard  on  the  plate. 

"If  you  need  to  be  told,  I  must  tell  you,  Mr. 
Mole.     Matilda's  in  the  way." 

No  definite  idea  came  to  Mr.  Mole,  but  a  funny 
little  throb  and  trickle  began  at  the  base  of  his  spine. 
He  dabbed  his  cigar  down  into  half  a  glass  of  beer 
that  Mr.  Copas  had  left. 

"We've  talked  it  out,  Mr.  Mole,  and  you've  got 
to  marry  her  or  pay  up  handsome." 

Marry!  His  first  thought  was  in  terms  of  the 
novelette,  but  those  terms  would  not  embrace  Mrs. 
Copas  or  her  present  attitude.  His  first  glimpse  of 
the  physical  fact  was  through  the  chinks  of  his  senti- 
mental fiction,  and  he  was  angry  and  hurt  and  dis- 
gusted. Then,  the  fiction  never  having  been  rounded 
off,  he  was  able  to  escape  from  it — (rare  luck  in 
this  world  of  deceit) — and  he  shook  himself  free 
of  its  dust  and  tinsel,  and,  responding  to  the  urg- 
ency of  the  occasion,  saw  or  half-saw  the  circum- 
stances from  Matilda's  point  of  view.  Mentally  he 
swept  Mrs.  Copas  aside.  The  thing  lay  between 
himself  and  the  girl.  Out  of  her  presence  he  could 
not  either  think  or  feel  about  it  clearly.  Only  for 
himself  there  lay  here  and  now,  before  him,  the 
opportunity  for  action,  for  real,  direct,  effective  ac- 
tion, which  would  lift  him  out  of  his  despond  and 
bring  his  life  into  touch  with  another  life.  It  gave 
him  what  he  most  needed,  movement,  uplift,  the 

86 


PRELUDE 

occasion  for  spontaneity,  for  being  rid,  though  it 
might  be  only  temporarily,  of  his  fear  and  doubt 
and  sickness  of  mind.  Healthily,  or  rather,  in  his 
eagerness  for  health,  he  refused  to  think  of  the 
consequences.  He  lit  another  cigar,  steadying  him- 
self by  a  chair-back,  so  dazzled  was  he  by  the 
splendor  of  his  resolution  and  the  rush  of  mental 
energy  that  had  brought  him  to  it,  and  said: 

"Of  course,  if  Matilda  is  willing,  I  will  marry 
her." 

"I  didn't  expect  it  of  you,  being  a  gentleman," 
returned  Mrs.  Copas,  obliterating  her  spider's  web, 
"and,  marriage  being  the  lottery  it  is,  there  are 
worse  ways  of  doing  it  than  that.  After  all,  you  do 
know  you're  not  drawing  an  absolute  blank,  which, 
I  know,  happens  to  more  than  ever  lets  on." 


Mr.  Mole  found  that  it  is  much  easier  to  get 
married  in  life  than  in  sentimental  fiction.  He 
never  proposed  to  Matilda,  never  discussed  the  mat- 
ter with  her,  only  after  the  interview  with  Mrs. 
Copas  she  kissed  him  in  the  morning  and  in  the 
evening,  and  as  often  in  between  as  she  felt  inclined. 
He  made  arrangements  with  the  registrar,  bought 
a  special  license  and  a  ring.  He  said:  "I  take  you, 
Matilda  Burn,  to  be  my  lawful  wedded  wife,"  and 
she  said:  "I  take  you,  Herbert  Jocelyn  Beenham, 
to  be  my  lawful  wedded  husband."  Mrs.  Copas 
sat  on  the  registrar's  hat,  and,  without  any  other 
incident,  they  were  made  two  in  one  and  one  in  two. 

87 


OLD    MOLE 

In  view  of  the  approaching  change  in  his  condi- 
tion he  had  written  to  his  lawyer  and  his  banker  in 
Thrigsby,  giving  orders  to  have  all  his  personal 
property  realized  and  placed  on  deposit,  also  for 
five  hundred  pounds  to  be  placed  on  account  for 
Mrs.  H.  J.  Beenham. 

The  day  after  his  wedding  came  this  letter  from 
the  Head  Master: 

"My  Dear  Beenham: — I  am  delighted  that 
your  whereabouts  has  been  discovered.  All  search 
for  you  has  been  unavailing — one  would  not  have 
thought  it  so  easy  for  a  man  to  disappear — and  I 
had  begun  to  be  afraid  that  you  had  gone  abroad. 
As  I  say,  I  am  delighted,  and  I  trust  you  are  having 
a  pleasant  vacation.  I  owe  you,  I  am  afraid,  a 
profound  apology.  If  there  be  any  excuse,  it  must 
be  put  down  to  the  heat  and  the  strain  of  the  end 
of  the  scholastic  year.  I  was  thinking,  I  protest, 
only  of  the  ancient  foundation  which  you  and  I  have 
for  so  long  served.  The  Chairman  of  the  Governors, 
always,  as  you  know,  your  friend,  has  denounced 
what  he  is  pleased  to  call  my  Puritanical  cowardice. 
The  Police  have  made  inquiries  about  the  young 
woman  and  state  that  she  is  a  domestic  servant  who 
left  her  situation  in  distressing  circumstances  with- 
out her  box  and  without  a  character.  I  do  apolo- 
gize most  humbly,  my  dear  Beenham,  and  I  look 
to  see  you  in  your  place  at  the  commencement  of 
the  approaching  term." 

Old  Mole  read  this  letter  three  times,  and  the 
description  of  his  wife  stabbed  him  on  each  perusal 

88 


PRELUDE 

more  deeply  to  the  heart.  He  tore  the  sheet  across 
and  across  and  burned  the  pieces  on  the  hearth. 
Matilda  came  in  and  found  him  at  it:  and  when  she 
spoke  to  him  he  gave  no  answer,  but  remained  kneel- 
ing by  the  fender,  turning  the  poker  from  one  hand 
to  the  other. 

"Are  you  cross  with  me?"  she  said.    ♦ 
"No.    Not  with  you.    Not  with  you.     Not  with 
you." 

"You  don't  often  say  things  three  times." 
She  came  and  laid  her  hands  on  his  shoulders, 
and  he  took  them  and  kissed  them,   for  now  he 
adored  her. 


In  the  evening  came  a  knock  at  the  front  door. 
Mr.  Mole  was  at  the  theater  arranging  for  a  new 
play  with  which  to  reopen  when  the  boxing  season, 
which  had  been  extended,  was  over.  The  slut  of  a 
landlady  took  no  notice,  and  the  knock  was  repeated 
thrice.  Matilda  went  down  and  opened  the  door 
and  found  on  the  step  a  short,  plump,  rotund,  ele- 
gant little  man  with  spectacles  and  a  huge  mus- 
tache. He  asked  for  Mr.  Beenham,  and  she  said 
she  was  Mrs.  Beenham.  He  drew  himself  up  and 
was  very  stiff  and  said  at  the  back  of  his  throat: 

"I  am  your  husband's  brother." 

She  took  him  upstairs  to  their  sitting-room,  and 
he  told  her  how  distressed  he  was  at  the  news  that 
had  reached  him  and  to  find  his  brother  living  in 
such  a  humble  place.    He  added  that  it  was  a  seri- 

89 


OLD   MOLE 

ous  blow  to  all  his  family,  but  that,  for  his  part,  the 
world  being  what  it  was  and  life  on  it  being  also 
what  it  was,  he  hoped  that  all  might  be  for  the  best. 
Matilda  let  him  have  his  say  and  tactfully  led  him 
on  to  talk  about  himself,  and  he  told  her  all  about 
his  practice  at  the  Chancery  Bar,  and  the  wine  at  his 
club,  and  his  rooms  in  Gray's  Inn,  and  his  collec- 
tion of  Battersea  china,  and  his  trouble  with  the 
committee  of  his  golf  club,  and  his  dislike  for  most 
of  his  relations  except  his  brother  Herbert,  who  was 
the  last  man  in  the  world,  as  he  said,  he  had  ever 
expected  to  go  off  the  rails.  She  assured  him  then 
that  Herbert  was  the  best  and  kindest  of  men,  and 
that  it  would  not  be  her  fault  if  their  subsequent 
career  did  not  astonish  and  delight  him.  She  did 
not  drop  a  single  aitch,  and,  noticing  carefully  his 
London  pronunciation,  she  mentally  resolved  to 
change  her  broad  a's  and  in  future  to  call  a  school- 
master a  schoolmarster.  .  .  .  Their  conversation 
came  abruptly  to  an  end,  and  she  produced  a  pack 
of  cards  and  taught  him  how  to  play  German  whist. 
From  that  he  led  her  to  double-dummy  Bridge,  and 
they  were  still  at  it  when  his  brother  returned. 
Matilda  was  scolded  for  being  up  so  late,  kissed, 
by  both  men,  and  packed  off  to  bed. 

Whisky  was  produced.     Said  brother  Robert: 

"Well,  of  all  the  lunatics!" 

"So  you've  been  shocked  and  amazed  and  horri- 
fied.    Do  the  others  know?" 

"Not  yet.  ...     I  thought  I'd  better  see  you 
first." 

90 


PRELUDE 

"All  right.  Tell  them  that  I'm  married  and  have 
become  a  rogue  and  a  vagabond." 

"You're  not  going  on  with  this?" 
1  am. 

"Don't  be  a  fool.  Your  wife's  perfectly  charm- 
ing.   There's  nothing  against  her." 

"That's  had  nothing  to  do  with'  it.  I'm  going 
on  for  my  own  satisfaction.  I've  spent  half  my  life  in 
teaching.  I  want  to  spend  the  rest  of  it  in  learn- 
ing. 

"From  play-actors?    Oh!  come!" 

"My  dear  Robert,  life  isn't  at  all  what  you  think 
it  is.  It  isn't  what  I  thought  it  was.  I'm  interested. 
I'm  eager.    I'm  keen.  .  .  ." 

"And  mad.  .  .  ." 

"Maybe.  But  I  tell  you  that  life's  got  a  heart 
to  it  somewhere,  and  I'm  going  to  find  my  way  to 
it." 

"Then  you're  not  going  back?" 

"Never:  neither  to  the  old  work,  nor  to  the  old 
kind  of  people." 

"Not  even  when  I  tell  you  that  Uncle  Jocelyn  is 
dead  at  last  and  has  left  us  each  ten  thousand! 
Doesn't  that  make  any  difference,  H.  J.?" 

H.  J.  received  this  intelligence  almost  with  dis- 
may. It  took  him  back  into  the  family  councils,  the 
family  speculations  as  to  Uncle  Jocelyn's  will,  the 
family  squabbles  over  Uncle  Jocelyn's  personal  ef- 
fects and  their  distribution,  the  family  impatience  at 
Uncle  Jocelyn's  unconscionable  long  time  in  dying. 
And  the  vision  of  it  all  irritated  and  weighed  heavily 

91 


OLD    MOLE 

on  him.  Often  in  Thrigsby  he  had  said  to  himself 
that  when  Uncle  Jocelyn  died  he  would  retire.  And 
now  Uncle  Jocelyn  was  dead  and  he  found  his  leg- 
acy rather  a  bewilderment  than  a  relief.  It  was 
such  a  large  sum  of  money  that  it  made  him  fall 
back  into  his  old  sense  of  the  grotesque  in  his  re- 
lations with  Mr.  Copas  and  his  galley,  just  when  he 
was  congratulating  himself  on  being  able  to  enter  on 
his  new  life  with  real  zest  and  energy. 

"No,"  he  said,  "that  makes  no  difference.  I  shall 
stay  where  I  am." 

"If  there  is  ever  any  trouble,"  replied  Robert,  "I 
shall  be  only  too  glad  to  help." 

"Thank  you." 

Robert  tapped  at  his  mustache  and  said: 

"I  suppose  being  married  won't  interfere  with 
your  golf." 

"I'm  afraid  it  will."    This  came  very  tartly. 

"Er.  .  .  .  Sorry." 

That  had  flicked  Robert  on  the  raw.  He  had  been 
feeling  indulgent  toward  his  demented  brother  un- 
til his  more  than  doubtful  attitude  toward  ten  thou- 
sand pounds.  When  that  was  followed  with  the 
renunciation  of  golf  he  was  genuinely  distressed  and 
went  away  muttering  behind  his  mustache : 

"I  give  it  up.  I  give  it  up.  Ton  my  honor. 
Non  compos,  don't  y'know,  non  compos." 


Nothing  would  induce  Old  Mole  to  visit  Thrigsby 
again,  and  his  solicitor  had  to  send  a  clerk  down 

92 


PRELUDE 

with  documents  for  his  signature.  When  all  the 
legal  threads  were  tied  up  he  told  Matilda  the  ex- 
tent of  his  fortune,  and  how  he  had  been  asked  to 
return  to  his  position  at  the  school. 

"Are  you  sorry?"  she  asked. 

"No." 

"You  sha'n't  ever  be,  for  me.  Will  you  read  to 
me  now?" 

And  he  read  the  first  two  acts  of  "King  Lear." 

"That  isn't  the  play  you  were  reading  the  other 
day.  The  one  about  Venice  and  the  man  who  was 
such  a  good  soldier." 

He  had  begun  "Othello,"  but  it  had  filled  him 
with  terror,  for  it  had  brought  home  to  him  the  jeal- 
ousy that  was  gnawing  at  his  heart,  creeping  into 
his  bones.  Delivered  from  sentimentality  by  his 
surrender  to  his  own  generous  impulse,  sanded  over 
as  he  was  by  years  of  celibacy,  he  had  day  by  day 
more  swiftly  yielded  to  this  woman  whom  he  had 
taken  for  his  wife,  and  had  arrived  at  a  passion 
torn,  knotted,  and  twisted  by  jealousy  of  that  other 
whom  he  had  never  known,  whose  child  now  waxed 
in  her  womb  and  brought  her  to  long  periods  of  al- 
most self-hypnotized  inward  pondering,  so  that, 
though  she  was  all  grace,  all  tenderness  and  grati- 
tude toward  him,  she  was  never  his,  never,  even 
in  their  most  pleasant  moments,  anything  but  re- 
mote. The  agonies  through  which  he  passed  made 
him  only  the  more  determined  to  be  gentle  with 
her,  and  often  when  he  took  her  hand  and  pressed 
it,  and  she  gave  him  not  the  pressure  in  return  for 

93 


OLD   MOLE 

which  he  hoped  and  so  longed,  he  would  be  unable 
to  bear  it  and  would  go  out  and  walk  for  miles  and 
cry  out  upon  the  injustice  of  the  world.  And  then 
he  would  think  that  perhaps  she  loved  him,  per- 
haps it  was  an  even  greater  torture  to  her  to  have 
this  other  between  them;  surely  if  that  were  so  it 
must  be  keener  suffering  for  her  since  it  was  her 
doing  and  her  folly  and  not  his.  And  he  would 
hate  the  stain  upon  her,  give  way  before  the  violence 
of  his  hatred,  and  call  her  unworthy  and  long  with 
a  sick  longing  for  purity,  an  ideal  mating,  the  first 
kindling  in  both  man  and  woman  so  that  each  could 
be  all  to  the  other,  wholly,  with  never  so  much  as 
a  thought  lost  in  the  past,  never  so  much  as  the 
smallest  wear  and  usage  of  anterior  desire.  .  .  . 
He  would  persuade  himself  that  she  did  not  love 
him  at  all;  that  she  and  the  old  bawd  had  entrapped 
him  by  sordid  and  base  cunning.  And  those  were 
the  worst  hours  of  all.  But  when  he  was  with  her 
and  she  gave  him  her  smile  or  some  little  sudden 
friendly  caress  he  would  feel  comforted  and  very 
sure  of  her  and  of  the  future  when  they  would  both 
forget,  and  then  both  his  hatred  and  his  longing  for 
a  perfect  world  would  fall  away  from  him  and  he 
would  see  them  as  absurd  projections  of  those  con- 
trasts which  arise  and  haunt  the  half-comprehend- 
ing mind.  And  he  would  tell  himself  that  all  would 
be  well ;  that  they  would  be  happy  in  the  child  which 
would  be  his  also,  for  the  love  he  had  for  her.  And 
his  jealousy  would  return. 

Therefore  he  read  "King  Lear,"  and  the  pity  of 

94 


PRELUDE 

it  purged  him,  though  he  was  not  without  feeling 
that  he,  too,  was  cast  out  upon  the  barren  places  of 
the  earth  to  face  the  storm  and  meet  disaster.  Feel- 
ing so  he  said  to  Matilda : 

"Money  and  material  things  seem  to  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  life  at  all.  Here  am  I  with  you, 
whom  I  love.  .  .  ." 

"Do  you?" 

"I  love  you." 

"Thank  you." 

"With  you,  and  no  possible  anxiety  as  to  the  fu- 
ture, and  yet  I  seem  to  myself  to  be  on  the  very 
brink  of  explosion  and  disaster." 

"Dear  man.    I  wish  you  wouldn't  think  so  much." 

"I  must  think,  or  my  feelings  swamp  me." 

She  thrilled  him  by  taking  his  hand,  and  she  said: 

"Do  you  know  what  I  want?" 

"No.     You  shall  have  it." 

"I  want  to  make  you  happy." 

That  was  the  most  definite  assurance  of  her  feel- 
ing for  him  she  had  as  yet  given  him.  It  soothed 
his  jealousy,  made  it  easier  for  him  to  conquer  it, 
but  presently  it  laid  him  open  to  a  new  dread.  The 
time  for  her  confinement  was  drawing  on,  and  he 
began  to  think  that  out,  too ;  the  violence  and  bloodi- 
ness of  birth  haunted  him,  the  physical  pain  it  en- 
tailed, the  possibility  of  its  being  attended  by  death. 
She  had  promised  him  happiness,  and  she  might 
die !  He  became  over-scrupulous  in  his  treatment 
of  her  and  worried  her  about  her  health  so  that  she 
lost  her  temper  and  said: 

95 


OLD    MOLE 

"After  all,  it's  me  that's  got  to  go  through  with  it, 
and  /  don't  think  about  it." 

That  brought  him  up  sharp,  and  he  held  his 
peace  and  watched  her.  Truly  she  did  not  think 
about  it.  She  accepted  it.  It  was  to  her,  it  seemed, 
entirely  a  personal  matter,  perfectly  in  the  order  of 
things,  to  be  worried  through  as  occasion  served. 
It  might  go  well,  or  it  might  go  ill,  but  meanwhile 
there  were  the  things  of  the  moment  to  be  attended 
to  and  the  day's  pleasure  to  be  seized.  He  was 
humbled  and  a  little  envious  of  her.  For  a  little 
while  he  indulged  in  an  orgy  of  self-reproach,  but 
she  only  laughed  at  him  and  told  him  that  when  she 
had  so  much  cause  for  feeling  depressed  he  might 
at  least  comfort  her  with  the  sight  of  a  cheerful 
face.  He  laughed,  too,  and  told  himself  he  was  a 
selfish  ass  and  that  she  was  made  that  way  and  he 
was  made  another,  and  that  perhaps  men  and  women 
are  made  so,  men  thinking  and  women  accepting, 
or  perhaps  they  only  become  so  in  the  progress  of 
their  lives. 

Matilda's  baby  came  four  months  after  their 
marriage.     It  was  still-born. 


II 

MARRIAGE 

Sie  war  liebenswiirdig  und  er  liebte  sie: 
aber  er  war  nicht  liebenswiirdig  und  sie 
liebte  ihn  nicht. 


II 

MARRIAGE 

MATILDA  kept  her  promise  and  made  her 
husband  happy.  She  reduced  him  to  that 
condition  wherein  men  and  women  believe 
that  never  has  the  world  been  visited  by  such  love 
and  that  they  will  go  on  loving  forever  and  ever. 
This  she  achieved  by  leaving  his  affections  to  look 
after  themselves  and  concentrating  all  her  energies 
on  seeing  that  he  was  properly  fed  and  clothed,  had 
the  requisite  amount  of  sleep  and  just  enough  cos- 
seting to  make  him  wish  for  more,  which  he  did  not 
get.  She  left  the  ordering  of  their  coexistence  in 
his  hands,  and  he,  being  happy,  span  a  cocoon  of 
charming  fancies  about  it,  and  showed  little  dispo- 
sition to  change.  Therefore  they  continued  with 
Mr.  Copas  and  became  acquainted  with  the  four 
quarters  of  England  and  the  two  or  three  kinds  of 
towns  which  in  vast  numbers  have  grown  on  it,  like 
warts  on  the  face  of  Oliver  Cromwell.  Bemused 
by  the  romance  of  love  and  the  sense  of  well-being 
that  its  gratification  brings,  he  observed  very  little 
and  thought  less,  and  he  did  not  perceive  that  he 
was  falling  into  a  routine  as  dispirited  as  that  in 
which  he  had  gone  round  and  round  out  of  adoles- 

99 


OLD    MOLE 

cence  into  manhood  and  out  of  manhood  into  middle 
age.  Such  is  the  power  of  love — or  rather  of  a  cer- 
tain very  general  over-indulged  variant  of  it — that  it 
can  lift  a  man  out  of  space  and  time  and  set  him 
drifting  and  dreaming  through  a  larger  portion  of 
his  allotted  span  than  he  can  afford  to  lose.  As 
there  is  a  sort  of  peace  in  this  condition,  it  is  highly 
prized:  indeed,  it  passes  for  an  ideal,  being  as  ma- 
terial as  a  fatted  pig  into  whose  sides  you  can  poke 
your  finger,  as  into  a  cushion;  it  has  the  further 
merit  that  it  needs  no  effort  to  attain,  but  only  a 
fall  and  no  struggle.  Old  Mole  fell  into  it  and 
prized  it  and  told  himself  that  life  was  very  good. 
When  he  told  his  wife  that  life  was  very  good  she 
said  that  it  was  a  matter  of  opinion  and  it  depended 
what  you  happened  to  want. 

"What  do  you  want?"  he  asked. 

She  thumped  her  chest  with  the  odd  little  teasing 
gesture  that  was  perhaps  most  characteristic  of  her, 
and  said: 

"Something  big." 

"Aren't  you  content?" 

"Oh,  yes.     But  I  want  to  know,  to  find  out." 

He  stretched  his  legs  and,  with  a  beautiful  sense 
of  enunciating  wisdom,  he  remarked: 

"There  is  nothing  to  know,  nothing  to  find  out. 
Here  are  we,  a  man  and  a  woman,  fulfilling  the  des- 
tiny of  men  and  women,  and,  for  the  rest,  happy 
enough  in  the  occupation  to  which  circumstances  and 
our  several  destinies  and  characters  have  brought 
us.     I  am  perfectly  happy,  my  dear,  most  surpris- 

IOO 


MARRIAGE 

ingly  happy  when  I  look  back  and: coast Jer  all 
things.  I  have  no  ambition,  no  hopes,  and,  I  fancy, 
no  illusions;  most  happily  of  all,  I  have  no  politics. 
I  did  not  make  the  world  and  I  do  not  believe  that 
I  can  undo  anything  good  or  evil  which,  for  the 
world's  purposes,  is  necessary  to  be  done.  .  . 

He  had  developed  a  habit  of  talking  and  did  not 
know  it.  She  had  taken  refuge  in  silence  and  was 
aware  of  it. 

Once  she  asked  him  if  he  did  not  feel  the  want  of 
friends. 

"Friends?"  he  answered.  "I  want  nothing  while 
I  have  you." 

She  made  no  reply  and  he  was  left  hurt,  be- 
cause he  had  expected  appreciation  of  his  entire 
devotion. 

She  was  happy,  too,  but  more  keenly  than  he, 
for  she  was  a  little  dazed  by  her  astounding  luck, 
and  behind  her  pleasure  in  him  and  his  unfailing 
kindness  and  consideration  lay  the  sting  of  uneasi- 
ness and  the  dread  that  the  comfort  of  such  charm- 
ing days  could  not  last.  Ignorant,  untaught,  un- 
prepared, love  had  been  for  her  a  kiss  of  the  lips, 
a  surrender  to  the  flood  of  perilous  feeling,  a  tam- 
pering with  forces  that  might  or  might  not  sweep 
you  to  ruin:  a  matter  of  fancy,  dalliance,  and  risk. 
She  had  fancied,  dallied,  dared,  and  when  she  had 
thought  to  be  swept  to  ruin — and  that  swift  descent 
also  had  had  its  sickening  fascination — she  had  been 
tumbled  into   this  security  where  love  was   solid, 

IOI 


OLD    MOLE 

comfortable,  Qmnipresent,  and  apparently  all  pro- 
viding. She  was  perpetually  amazed  at  her  hus- 
band and  chafed  only  against  herself  because  she 
could  not  share  his  complacency.  It  was  easy  for 
her  to  assimilate  his  manners  and  to  take  the  meas- 
ure of  his  refinement.  With  talk  of  her  brothers 
and  sisters  she  would  lead  him  on  to  tell  of  his  fam- 
ily, and  especially  of  the  women  among  whom  he 
had  spent  his  boyhood,  and  she  would  contrast  her- 
self with  them  and  rebel  against  everything  in  her- 
self that  was  not  harmonious  with  their  atmosphere. 
And  she  found  it  increasingly  difficult  to  get  on  with 
her  aunt,  Mrs.  Copas. 

The  new  comic,  John  Lomas,  was  a  great  suc- 
cess. He  was  a  fat  little  man  in  the  fifties  with  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  his  business,  which  was  to 
make  any  and  every  kind  of  audience  laugh.  A 
wonderful  stock  of  tricks  he  had,  tricks  of  voice,  of 
limbs,  of  gesture,  of  facial  expression,  nothing  but 
tricks,  inexhaustible.  He  cared  about  nothing  in 
the  world  but  what  he  called  "the  laugh,"  and  when 
he  got  one  he  wanted  another,  and  always  had  a 
quip  or  a  leer  or  a  cantrip  to  get  it.  But  he  was  a 
rascal  and  a  drunkard,  and  had  lost  all  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things  and  always  went  on  too  long  until 
his  audience  was  weary  of  him.  Therefore  he  had 
come  down  and  down  until  he  found  an  appetite  to 
feed  that  was  gross  enough  to  bear  with  his  in- 
sistence. .  .  .  He  said — it  may  have  been  true — 
that  he  had  played  before  the  King  of  England,  and 
he  was  full  of  stories  of  the  theaters  in  London, 

102 


MARRIAGE 

the  real  nobby  theaters  where  the  swells  paid  half 
a  guinea  for  a  seat  and  brought  their  wives  and 
other  people's  wives  in  shining  jewels  and  dresses 
cut  low  back  and  front.  He  had  played  in  every 
kind  of  piece,  from  the  old-fashioned  kind  of  bur- 
lesque to  melodrama,  drama,  and  Shakespeare,  and 
he  had  never  had  any  luck,  but  had  always  been  on 
the  point  of  making  a  fortune.  "Charley's  Aunt," 
he  said,  had  been  offered  to  him,  and  he  had  taken 
an  option,  but  at  the  last  moment  his  backers  failed 
him.  "And  look  at  the  money  that  had  made  and 
was  still  making."  His  first  stage  of  intoxication 
was  melancholy,  and  then  he  would  weep  over  the 
mess  he  had  made  of  his  life  and  grow  maudlin  and 
tell  how  badly  he  had  treated  the  dear  little  woman 
who  had  been  his  wife  so  that  she  had  left  him  and 
gone  off  with  a  bloody  journalist.  When  that  mood 
passed  he  would  grow  excited  and  blustering,  and 
brag  of  the  slap-up  women  he  had  had  when  he  was 
making  his  thirty  pounds  a  week.  His  most  inti- 
mate confessions  were  reserved  for  Matilda,  for  he 
despised  Copas  because  he  had  never  known  any- 
thing better  than  a  fit-up.  And  of  Mr.  Mole  he  was 
rather  scared. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  would  say  to  Matilda.  "I 
don't  know  what  it  is,  but  your  guv'nor  ain't  one  of 
us,  is  he  now?" 

And  when  Matilda  agreed  that  Mr.  Mole  was 
different  he  called  her  a  silly  cuckoo  for  not  making 
him  take  her  to  London  and  the  Continong  to  have 
a  high  old  time. 

103 


OLD   MOLE 

He  could  play  the  piano  in  a  fumbling  fashion, 
and  he  used  to  sing  through  the  scores  of  some  of 
the  old  pieces  he  had  been  in,  with  reminiscences  of 
the  players  who  had  been  successful  in  them  and 
full  histories  of  their  ups  and  downs  and  their  not 
unblemished  lives,  all  with  a  full-throated  sentimen- 
tality that  made  every  tale  as  he  told  it  romantic 
and  charming.  Broken  and  rejected  by  it  as  he  was, 
he  worshiped  the  theater  and  gloried  in  it,  and  the 
smell  of  the  grease  paint  was  to  him  as  the  smell  of 
the  field  to  a  Jewish  patriarch. 

One  day  he  insisted  that  Matilda  should  sing,  and 
he  taught  her  one  of  the  old  coon  songs  that  had 
haunted  London  in  the  days  of  his  prosperity.  At 
first  she  was  shy  and  sang  only  from  her  throat, 
and  he  banged  out  the  accompaniment  and  drowned 
her  voice  and  told  her  that  really  no  one  would 
hear  her  but  the  conductor.  She  must  sing  so  that 
she  could  feel  as  if  her  voice  was  a  little  bigger  than 
herself.  The  phrase  seized  her  imagination,  and 
she  tried  again.  This  time  she  produced  a  few  full 
notes  and  then  had  no  breath  left  to  compass  the 
rest.  However,  he  was  satisfied,  and  said  she'd  do 
for  the  chorus  all  right. 

"And  some  of  those  gels,  mark  you,"  he  said, 
"do  very  well  for  themselves,  in  the  way  of  mar- 
riage, and  out  of  it." 

He  taught  her  to  dance,  said  she  had  just  the  feet 
for  it.  "Not  real  slap-up  dancing,  of  course,  but 
the  sort  you  get  in  any  old  London  show;  the  sort 
that's  good  enough  with  all  the  rest — and  you've 

104 


MARRIAGE 

got  that  all  right,  my  dear — and  not  a  bit  of  good 
without  it." 

The  development  of  these  small  accomplishments 
gave  her  a  very  full  pleasure,  greater  confidence  in 
herself,  and  a  feeling  of  independence.  She  took  a 
naive  and  childish  pride  in  her  body  from  which 
these  wonders  came.  They  gave  her  far  keener  de- 
light than  "the  acting"  had  ever  done,  but  she  never 
connected  them  with  her  ambition.  They  were  a 
purely  personal  secret  treasure,  an  inmost  chamber 
whither  she  could  retire  and  let  go,  and  be  expan- 
sively, irresponsibly  herself. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  first  year  of  their  mar- 
riage, in  the  harsh  months  of  the  close  of  the  year, 
they  were  for  six  weeks  in  a  city  that  sprawled  and 
tumbled  over  the  huge  moors  of  Yorkshire.  It 
rained  almost  continuously,  and  it  was  very  cold, 
but  in  that  city,  which  almost  less  than  any  other 
of  the  industrial  purgatories  of  the  kingdom  ap- 
preciates art  and  the  things  of  the  mind,  they  pros- 
pered. John  Lomas  got  his  fill  of  laughter,  and, 
the  kinematograph  being  no  new  thing  there,  the 
theater  weathered  that  competition. 

Matilda  wrote  to  her  sister,  Mrs.  Boothroyd, 
whose  husband  was  employed  at  the  municipal  gas- 
works, and  sent  her  a  pass.  She  gave  her  news: 
how  she  was  married  and  happy  and  enjoying  her 
work  with  her  uncle.  The  Boothroyd  family  only 
knew  of  Matilda's  disaster  and  nothing  of  her  sub- 
sequent history.     Mr.  Boothroyd,  who  was  a  dea- 

105 


OLD    MOLE 

con  at  his  chapel,  forbade  his  wife  to  take  any  no- 
tice of  the  letter,  and  she  obeyed  him,  but,  when  he 
was  on  the  night  shift  at  the  works,  she  made  use 
of  the  pass. 

The  program  consisted  of  Mr.  Mole's  "Iphi- 
genia,"  and  a  farce  introduced  into  the  repertory  by 
John  Lomas  from  what  he  could  remember  of  a 
successful  venture  at  the  old  Strand  Theater  in 
London.  Matilda  appeared  in  both  pieces.  She 
was  so  successful  that  Mrs.  Boothroyd,  who  sat  in 
the  front  row,  swelled  with  pride,  and,  as  she 
clapped  her  hands,  turned  to  her  neighbor: 

"Isn't  she  good?  And  so  pretty,  too!  Whoever 
would  have  thought  it?  But  there  always  was 
something  about  her.     She's  my  sister,  you  know." 

"Indeed?  Then  I  am  pleased  to  meet  you.  She 
is  my  wife." 

"Well,  I  never!  . 

Mrs.  Boothroyd  seized  Old  Mole  by  the  hand 
and  shook  it  warmly,  while  she  giggled  with  excite- 
ment. She  bore  a  faint  resemblance  to  Matilda, 
but  looked  worn,  had  that  pathetic,  punctured  ap- 
pearance which  comes  from  overmuch  child-bearing. 
Throughout  the  rest  of  the  performance  she  only 
glanced  occasionally  at  the  stage  and  devoted 
her  attention  to  scanning  her  brother-in-law's 
appearance.  At  the  close  of  the  second  piece  she 
said: 

"I  am  glad.  It  would  never  ha'  done  for  her  to 
'ave  a  young  'usband.     She  was  always  the  flighty 


one." 


106 


MARRIAGE 

This  sounded  ominously  to  Old  Mole,  who  for 
more  than  a  year  now  had  been  young  with  Ma- 
tilda's youth,  and  so  comfortably  accustomed  to 
it  that  he  never  dared  in  thought  dissever 
himself  from  her.  He  rejoined  that  his  sister-in- 
law  would  be  glad  to  know  that  Matilda  was  settled 
down. 

They  went  behind  and  found  her  hot  and  flus- 
tered, painted,  and  half  out  of  the  gipsy  dress  in 
which  she  had  made  her  last  appearance.  When  she 
saw  Mrs.  Boothroyd  she  gave  a  cry  of  delight, 
rushed  to  her  and  flung  her  arms  round  her  neck 
and  kissed  her. 

"Didn't  Jimmy  come,  too?" 

"No;  Jimmy  was  at  the  works,  and  couldn't 
come." 

Matilda  asked  after  all  the  Boothroyd  children 
and  her  own  brothers  and  sisters,  and  all  their 
illnesses  and  minor  disasters  were  retailed.  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Copas  came  in  and  embraced  Bertha 
Boothroyd,  whom  they  had  not  seen  since  she  was 
a  little  girl,  and  when  she  said  how  proud  she  was 
of  Matilda  they  replied  that  she  had  every  reason 
to  be.  John  Lomas  appeared  with  stout  and  bis- 
cuits, and  the  occasion  was  celebrated.  Warmed 
by  this  conviviality,  Mrs.  Boothroyd  invited  them 
all  to  tea  with  her  on  the  next  day  but  one,  then, 
alarmed  at  the  thought  of  what  she  had  done,  gave 
a  little  frightened  gasp,  was  pale  and  silent  for  a 
few  moments,  and  at  last  said  she  must  be  home  to 
give  Jim  his  supper  when  he  came  back. 

107 


OLD   MOLE 

She  kissed  and  was  kissed.  Her  disquietude  had 
blown  the  high  spirits  of  the  party.  When  she  had 
gone  Matilda  said: 

''Jim's  a  devil.  Bertha's  had  a  baby  every  year 
since  she  was  married,  and  he  thinks  of  nothing  but 
saving  his  own  soul." 

Next  day  came  a  note  from  Bertha  saying  she  was 
afraid  her  little  house  would  not  accommodate  the 
whole  party,  but  would  Matilda  bring  her  husband. 
"Is  Mr.  Mole  an  actor?"  she  asked.  "I  told  Jim 
he  wasn't." 

Bertha's  address  was  33  June  Street.  It  was  a 
long  journey  by  tram,  and  then  Matilda  and  her 
husband  had  to  walk  nearly  a  mile  down  a  monot- 
onous road  intersected  with  little  streets.  The  name 
of  the  road  was  Pretoria  Avenue,  and  on  one  side 
the  little  streets  were  called  after  the  months  of 
the  year,  and  on  the  other  after  the  twelve  Apostles. 
The  Boothroyds  therefore  lived  in  the  very  heart  of 
the  product  of  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Their  front  door  opened  straight  on  to  the  street, 
they  had  a  little  yard  at  the  back,  and  their  house 
consisted  of  eight  rooms.  The  parlor  door  was 
unlocked  for  the  visit,  and,  amid  photographs  of 
many  Boothroyds,  testimonials  to  the  worthiness  of 
James  Boothroyd  and  his  Oddfellows'  certificate, 
tea  was  laid,  none  of  your  proper  Yorkshire  teas, 
but  afternoon  tea  with  thin  bread  and  butter.  Five 
little  Boothroyds  in  clean  collars  and  pinafores  were 

108 


MARRIAGE 

placed  round  the  room,  and  stared  alternately  at 
the  cake  on  the  table  and  their  aunt  and  their  new 
uncle.  Old  Mole  endeavored  to  avoid  their  gaze, 
but  the  room  seemed  full  of  round  staring  gray 
eyes,  and  when  he  considered  the  corpulent  Ameri- 
can organ  that  took  up  the  whole  wall  opposite  the 
fireplace,  he  was  astonished  that  so  many  people 
could  be  crammed  into  so  small  a  space.  Then  he 
estimated  that  there  were  at  least  sixty  other  ex- 
actly similar  houses  in  the  street,  that  from  January 
to  December  there  were  streets  in  replica,  not  to 
mention  those  on  the  other  side  of  the  road  which 
were  named  from  John  to — surely  not  to  Judas? 
He  remembered  then  that  one  street  was  called 
Paul  Street.  .  .  .  Dozens  and  dozens  of  houses, 
each  with  its  Boothroyd  family  and  its  American 
organ.  Dejectedly  he  told  himself  that  these  were 
the  poor,  until,  glancing  across  at  Matilda,  he  re- 
membered that  it  was  from  such  a  house,  among 
dozens  of  such  houses,  that  she  had  come.  That 
thought  colored  his  survey,  and  he  reminded  him- 
self, as  nearly  always  he  was  forced  to  do  when 
considering  her  actions  or  any  episode  in  her  his- 
tory, that  his  own  comfortable  middle-class  stan- 
dards were  not  at  all  proper  to  the  consideration  of 
the  phenomena  of  mean  streets.  Desperately  anx- 
ious to  make  himself  pleasant  to  Matilda's  sister, 
he  asked  heavily: 

"Are  these   all ?" 

She  was  in  such  a  flutter  that  she  did  not  leave 
him  time  to  finish  his  sentence,  took  him  to  be  re- 

109 


OLD    MOLE 

ferring  to  the  children,  and  said:  "Yes,  they  were 
all  hers,  and  there  were  two  more  in  the  kitchen." 

With  more  tact  Matilda  cut  the  cake  and  gave  a 
piece  to  each  of  the  five  children.  Mrs.  Boothroyd 
said  she  was  spoiling  them,  and  Matilda  retorted: 

"If  they're  good  children  you  can't  spoil  them." 

And  the  children  giggled  crumbily  and  presently 
they  sidled  and  edged  up  to  their  aunt  and  began  to 
finger  her  and  pluck  at  her  clothes.  Seeing  his  wife 
so  set  Old  Mole  off  on  an  entirely  new  train  of 
thought  and  feeling,  and  he  began  to  contrast  the 
Copas  atmosphere  with  this  domestic  interior. 
Very  queerly  it  gave  a  sort  of  life  to  that  crusted  old 
formula  that  had,  with  so  many  others,  gone  by  the 
board  in  his  eruption  from  secondary  education, 
wherein  it  was  laid  down  that  a  woman's  place  is 
her  home.  He  could  never,  without  discomfort, 
apply  any  formula  to  Matilda,  but  to  see  her  there, 
with  the  bloom  on  her,  in  her  full  beauty,  with  the 
five  little  children  at  her  knees,  made  this  idea  so 
attractive  that  he  was  loath  to  relinquish  it:  nor  did 
he  do  so  until  Matilda  asked  if  she  might  see  the 
house,  when  she  and  Mrs.  Boothroyd  and  the  five 
children  left  him  alone  with  the  ruins  of  the  cake 
and  the  American  organ. 

He  was  profoundly  uneasy.  He  had  not  ex- 
actly idealized  the  Copas  theater  and  all  its  doings, 
but  he  had  come  to  them  on  the  crest  of  a  violent 
wave  of  reaction  and  had  been  apt  to  set  them 
against  and  above  everything  in  the  world  that  was 
solid  and  stolid  and  workaday.     It  had  been  en- 

iio 


MARRIAGE 

chanted  for  him  by  Matilda,  and  she  had  in  June 
Street  set  an  even  more  potent  spell  upon  him  and 
wafted  him  not  into  any  kingdom  of  the  imagina- 
tion, but  into  the  warm  heart  of  life  itself.  In  the 
Copas  world  he  had  made  no  allowance  for  chil- 
dren: in  June  Street,  in  dull  industrial  respecta- 
bility, children  were  paramount.  They  surrounded 
Matilda  and  set  him,  in  his  slow  fashion,  tingling 
to  the  marvel  of  her.  His  response  to  this  miracle 
took  the  form  of  a  desire  to  open  his  pockets  to  the 
children.  He  took  out  a  handful  of  money,  and  had 
selected  five  shillings  when  the  door  opened  and  a 
man  entered,  a  dark,  white-faced,  thin-lipped  man, 
with  dirty  hands  and  an  aggressive  jut  of  the 
shoulders. 

"YeVe  been  tea-partying,  I  see,"  said  the  man. 

Old  Mole  explained  his  identity.  The  man  put 
his  head  out  of  the  door  and  yelled  to  his  wife.  She 
returned  with  Matilda,  but  the  children  did  not 
come.  James  Boothroyd  ignored  the  visitors  to  his 
house  and  said  to  his  cowering  wife : 

"You'll  clean  up  yon  litter  an'  you'll  lock  t'door. 
What'll  neighbors  say  of  us?  I  don't  know  these 
folk.  You'll  lock  t'door  and  then  you'll  gi'  me 
me  tea  in  t'kitchen." 

There  was  no  sign  of  anger  in  the  man.  He 
had  taken  in  the  situation  at  a  glance  and  was  con- 
cerned only  to  bring  it  to  the  issue  he  desired.  His 
relations  by  marriage  were  spotted  by  a  world  which 
he  shunned  as  darkest  Hell,  and  he  would  have  none 
of  them. 

m 


OLD    MOLE 

With  as  much  dignity  as  he  could  muster,  Old 
Mole  led  his  wife  out  into  June  Street.  He  was 
filled  only  with  pity  for  Bertha. 

Said  Matilda:  "Didn't  I  tell  you  he  was  a  devil?" 

Later  in  their  lodging  he  asked  her : 

"Are  all  the  men  in  those  streets  like  that?" 

"If  they're  religious,  they're  like  that.  If  they're 
not  religious  they're  drunk.  If  they're  not  drunk 
you  never  know  when  they're  going  to  leave  you. 
That's  the  sort  of  life  I  came  out  of  and  that's  the 
sort  of  life  I'm  never  going  back  into  if  I  can  help 
it." 

"You  won't  need  to,  my  dear." 

"You  never  know." 

With  which  disquieting  assurance  he  was  left  to 
reflect  that  she  seemed  to  have  been  as  much  upset 
by  her  visit  to  June  Street  as  himself.  He  was  tor- 
mented by  a  vision  of  England,  this  little  isle,  the 
home  of  heroes  and  great  men,  groaning  beneath  the 
weight  of  miles  of  such  streets  and  sinking  under 
the  tread  of  millions  of  men  like  James  Boothroyd. 
Lustily  he  strove  for  a  cool,  intellectual  considera- 
tion of  it  all,  a  point  from  which  the  network  of  the 
meanish  streets  of  the  cities  of  England  could  be 
seen  as  justifiable,  necessary,  and  unto  their  own 
ends  sufficient,  but,  seen  from  the  Copas  world,  they 
were  repulsive  and  harsh;  viewed  through  Matilda 
they  were  touched  with  magic. 

They  were  both  unsettled  and  passed  through 
days  of  irritation  when  they  came  perilously  near  to 

112 


MAKRIAGE 

quarreling.  In  the  end  they  made  it  up  and  found 
that  they  had  conquered  new  territory  for  intimacy. 
On  that  territory  they  discussed  their  marriage,  and 
he  told  her  that  he  would  like  her  to  have  a  child. 
She  burst  into  tears,  and  confessed  that  after  her 
calamity  the  doctor  had  told  her  it  was  very  im- 
probable she  ever  would.  He  was  for  so  long 
silent  on  that,  being  numbed  by  the  sudden  chill  at 
his  heart,  that  she  took  alarm  and  came  and  knelt 
at  his  side  and  implored  him  to  forgive  her,  and 
said  that  if  he  did  not  she  would  go  out  on  to  the 
railway  or  into  the  canal.  Then  he,  too,  wept,  and 
they  held  each  other  close  and  sobbed  out  that  the 
world  was  very,  very  cruel,  but  they  must  be  all  in 
all  to  each  other.  And  he  said  they  would  go  away 
and  settle  down  in  some  pretty  place  and  live  quietly 
and  happily  together  right  away  from  towns  and 
theaters  and  everything.  She  shook  her  head,  and, 
with  the  tears  streaming  down  her  cheeks,  she  said: 
No,  she  did  not  want  to  be  a  lady;  at  least,  not 
that  sort  of  a  lady.  He  made  many  suggestions, 
but  always  her  mind  flew  ahead  of  his,  and  she  had 
constructed  some  horrid  sort  of  a  picture  of  the 
existence  it  would  entail.  At  last  he  gave  it  up  and 
said  he  supposed  if  there  was  to  be  a  change  it  would 
come  of  its  own  accord. 

It  came. 

Mrs.  Copas,  quite  suddenly  and  for  no  apparent 
reason,  decided  that  she  was  middle-aged,  entirely 
altered  her  style  of  dressing  and  doing  her  hair, 

113 


OLD    MOLE 

and,  as  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  the  advent 
of  her  maturity,  set  her  heart  on  a  black  silk  gown. 
She  cajoled  and  teased  and  bullied  her  husband,  but 
in  vain.  He  was  replenishing  the  theatrical  ward- 
robe and  could  not  be  led  to  take  any  interest  in 
hers.  She  pursued  Mr.  Mole  with  hints  and  flattery, 
but  he  could  not  or  would  not  see  her  purpose.  He 
had  decided  that  Matilda  should  be  dressed  in  a 
style  more  befitting  his  wife  than  she  had  adopted 
heretofore,  and  was  spending  many  happy  and 
weary  hours  in  the  shops  patronized  by  the  wives  of 
clerks  and  well-to-do  tradespeople.  Incidentally  he 
discovered  a  great  deal  about  what  women  wear  and 
its  powerful  influence  over  their  whole  being.  In 
her  new  clothes  Matilda  was  more  dignified,  more 
handsome,  more  certain  of  herself,  and  she  gained 
in  grace.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Copas  took  to  haunting  their 
lodgings  and  was  nearly  always  there  when  a  new 
hat  or  a  new  jacket  came  home  from  the  shops.  She 
would  insist  on  Matilda's  trying  them  on,  and  would 
go  into  loud  ecstatic  praise  and  long  reminiscences 
of  the  fine  garments  she  had  had  when  she  was  a 
young  woman,  and  Mr.  Copas  was  the  most  atten- 
tive husband  in  the  world. 

An  old  peacock  without  its  tail  is  a  sorry  sight, 
and  the  young  birds  scorn  him.  Matilda  did  not 
exactly  scorn  her  aunt,  but  her  continued  presence 
was  an  irritant.  She  was  not  yet  at  her  ease  in  the 
possession  of  many  fine  clothes  and  was  entirely  set 
on  gaining  the  mastery  of  them  and  of  the  acces- 
sion of  personality  they  brought.     Mrs.  Copas  was 

114 


MARRIAGE 

a  clog  upon  this  desire,  and  therefore  when,  after 
many  hints  and  references,  she  came  suddenly  to 
the  point  and  asked  pointblank  for  a  loan  of  four 
pounds  wherewith  to  buy  a  black  silk  gown,  Ma- 
tilda flushed  with  anger  and  exasperation  and  replied 
curtly  that  her  husband  was  not  made  of  money. 

"No,  dearie,  I  know,  but  Fd  so  set  my  heart  on  a 
black  silk  gown." 

And  the  towsled  old  creature  looked  so  pathetic 
and  disappointed  that  Matilda  was  on  the  point  of 
yielding;  but  indeed  she  was  really  alarmed  at  the 
amount  of  money  that  had  been  spent — more  than 
twenty  pounds — and  she  followed  up  her  reply  with 
a  firm  No. 

Mrs.  Copas  took  it  ill,  and  set  herself  to  making 
things  unpleasant  for  Mr.  Mole  and  his  wife.  She 
had  control  of  affairs  behind  scenes  and  also  of  the 
commissariat,  and  it  was  not  long  before  she  had 
provoked  a  quarrel.  Matilda  told  her  she  was  a 
disagreeable  old  woman ;  to  which  she  hit  back  with : 

"Some  women  don't  care  how  they  get  husbands." 

Following  on  that  there  was  such  a  sparring  and 
snarling  that  in  the  end  Mr.  Copas  declared  that  his 
theater  was  not  big  enough  for  the  two  of  them,  and 
that  Matilda  must  either  eat  her  words  and  beg  her 
aunt's  pardon  or  go.  As  the  most  injurious  in- 
sults had  come  from  her  aunt,  Matilda  kicked 
against  the  injustice  of  this  decree  and  flounced 
away.  She  said  nothing  to  her  husband  of  what 
had  taken  place.  They  were  at  the  beginning  of 
December,  and  already  the  hoardings  of  the  town 

.US: 


OLD   MOLE 

were  covered  with  announcements  of  the  approach- 
ing annual  pantomime  at  the  principal  theater,  to- 
gether with  the  names  of  the  distinguished  artistes 
engaged.  Matilda  dressed  herself  in  her  very 
smartest  and  for  the  first  time  donned  the  musquash 
toque,  tippet  and  muff  she  had  been  given.  They 
were  the  first  furs  she  had  ever  possessed,  and  she 
felt  so  grand  in  them  that  she  was  shy  of  wearing 
them.  When  she  had  walked  along  several  streets 
and  seen  herself  in  a  shop  window  or  two,  they  gave 
her  courage  for  her  purpose,  and  she  told  herself 
that  she  was,  after  all,  as  good  as  anyone  else  who 
might  be  wanting  to  do  the  work,  set  her  chin  in  the 
air,  went  to  the  theater,  and  asked  to  see  the  man- 
ager. The  doorkeeper  had  instructions  not  to  turn 
away  anything  that  looked  promising  and  only  to 
reject  those  who  looked  more  than  thirty-five  and 
obviously  had  no  chance  of  looking  pretty  even  be- 
hind the  footlights.  He  did  not  reject  Matilda. 
She  was  shown  into  the  manager's  presence,  stated 
her  wishes  and  accomplishments  and  experience. 
The  manager  did  not  invite  her  either  to  sing  or  to 
dance,  but  asked  her  if  she  minded  what  she  wore. 
She  had  seen  pantomimes  in  Thrigsby,  and  she  said 
she  did  not  mind. 

"All  right,  my  dear,"  said  the  manager,  who  was 
good  looking,  young,  but  pale  and  weary  in  expres- 
sion. And  Matilda  found  herself  engaged  for  the 
chorus  at  one  pound  a  week. 

She  told  Lomas  first,  and  he  was  delighted.  When 
it  came  to  her  husband  she  found  it  rather  difficult 

116 


MARRIAGE 

to  tell  him,  was  half  afraid  that  he  would  forbid 
her  to  pursue  the  adventure,  and  half  ashamed,  after 
his  great  kindness,  of  having  acted  without  consult- 
ing him.  However,  she  was  determined  to  go  on 
with  it  and  to  uproot  him  from  the  Copas  theater. 
She  began  by  telling  him  of  her  quarrel  with  her 
aunt. 

"I  thought  that  was  bound  to  happen/'  he  said. 

"Yes.  It  came  to  that  that  uncle  said  I  must  go. 
What  do  you  think  I've  done?" 

"Bought  a  new  dress?" 

"No.     Better  than  that." 

"Made  friends  with  the  Lord  Mayor?" 

"Funny!    No." 

"What  have  you  done,  then?" 

"I've  got  an  engagement  at  the  theater,  the  real, 
big  theater  where  they  have  a  proper  stage,  and  a 
stage  door  and  a  box  office,  and  a  manager  who 
wears  evening  dress." 

"Indeed?    And  for  how  long?" 

"It  may  be  for  ten  weeks  and  it  may  be  for  thir- 
teen.   It  was  fifteen  last  year." 

"And  what  am  I  to  do?" 

She  had  not  thought  about  him  and  was  non- 
plussed. However,  he  needed  very  little  cajoling 
before  he  gave  his  consent  to  her  plan,  and  she  told 
him  that  if  he  got  bored  he  could  easily  go  away 
by  himself  and  come  back  when  he  wasn't  bored 
any  longer.  Inwardly  he  felt  that  the  difficulty  was 
not  going  to  be  so  easily  settled  as  all  that,  but  he 
was  on  the  whole  relieved  to  be  rid  of  Mr.  Copas, 

**2 


OLD    MOLE 

who  had  arranged  to  move  on  as  soon  as  the  pan- 
tomime opened  to  the  distraction  of  the  public  and 
the  devastation  of  his  business.  When  Mr.  Mole 
announced  his  intention  of  remaining  the  actor  was 
affronted  and  refused  to  speak  to  him  again.  Ma- 
tilda said,  a  little  maliciously,  that  he  was  afraid  of 
being  asked  for  the  money  he  owed  them,  and  that 
was  her  parting  shot  after  Mrs.  Copas,  who  got  her 
own  back  with  the  loud  sneer  in  Mr.  Mole's  pres- 
ence: 

"There's  not  many  married  women  would  wear 
tights  and  not  many  husbands  would  let  'em." 

Old  Mole  gasped,  and  looked  forward  with  dread 
to  the  first  performance  of  the  pantomime.  He  was 
spared  the  indignity  of  tights,  for  the  fifty  women 
in  the  chorus  were  divided  into  "girls"  and  "boys," 
in  accordance  with  their  size,  and  Matilda  was  a 
"girl."  She  took  her  work  very  seriously,  put  far 
more  energy  into  it  than  she  had  ever  done  into 
"Iphigenia"  or  "Josephine."  The  theater,  one  of 
the  largest  in  England,  awed  her  by  the  size  of  its 
machinery,  and  she  was  excited  and  impressed  by  all 
the  talk  and  gossip  she  heard  of  the  doings  of  the 
theaters  and  the  halls.  She  disliked  most  of  her 
colleagues  in  the  chorus,  and  of  the  principals  only 
one  was  not  too  exalted  to  take  notice  of  her.  This 
was  a  young  actor  named,  professionally,  Carlton 
Timmis  (pronounced  Timms),  who  played  the 
Demon  King.  He  was  very  attentive  and  kind  to 
her,  and  when  she  asked  if  she  might  introduce  him 
to  her  husband  he  was  obviously  dismayed,  but  ex- 

1X8 


MARRIAGE 

pressed  himself  as  delighted.  He  was  a  rather 
beautiful  young  man  and  very  romantic,  and  he  and 
Old  Mole  found  much  to  talk  of  together. 

"You  can't  think,"  said  Timmis,  "what  a  relief  it 
is  to  meet  a  man  with  a  soul.  Among  all  those 
idiots  one  is  parched,  withered,  dried  up." 

And  much  the  same  thought  was  in  Old  Mole's 
mind.  Looking  back  he  was  astonished  that  he 
could  for  so  long  have  tolerated  the  unintelligent 
society  in  which  he  had  been  cast.  Timmis  had  de- 
cided, if  erratic,  opinions,  and  he  loved  nothing 
better  than  gloomily  to  grope  after  philosophical 
conceptions.  Being  very  young  and  unsuccessful,  he 
was  pessimistic  and  clutched  eagerly  at  everything 
which  encouraged  him  in  his  belief  in  a  world 
blindly  responding  to  some  mysterious  law  of  de- 
struction. Old  Mole  was  inclined  toward  optimis- 
tic Deism  and  materialism,  and  they  struck  sparks 
out  of  each  other,  Timmis  moving  in  a  whirl  of 
nebulous  ideas,  and  his  interlocutor  moving  so  slowly 
that,  by  contrast,  he  seemed  almost  rigid. 

"Take  myself,"  Timmis  would  say.  "Can  there 
be  any  sense  in  a  world  which  condemns  me  to  play 
the  Demon  King  in  an  idiotic  pantomime,  or  indeed 
in  a  world  which  demands,  indulges,  encourages, 
delights  in  such  driveling  nonsense  as  that  same 
pantomime?" 

"There  is  room  for  everything  in  the  world,  which 
is  very  large,"  replied  Old  Mole. 

"Then  why  are  men  starved,  physically,  morally 
and  spiritually?" 

119 


OLD    MOLE 

"The  universe,"  came  the  reply,  between  two  long 
puffs  of  a  cigar,  "was  not  made  for  man,  but  man 
was  made  for  the  universe." 

(This  was  an  impromptu,  but  Old  Mole  often  re- 
curred to  it,  and  indeed  declared  that  his  philosophy 
dated  from  that  day  and  that  utterance.) 

"But  why  was  the  universe  made?" 

"Certainly  not  from  human  motives  and  not  in 
terms  of  human  understanding.  To  hear  you  talk 
one  would  think  the  whole  creation  was  in  a  state 
of  decomposition." 

"So  it  is.  That  is  its  motive  force,  an  irresist- 
ible rotting  away  into  nothing.  I  don't  believe 
anything  but  decomposition  could  produce  that 
pantomime." 

"The  pantomime  is  so  small  a  thing  that  I  think 
it  impossible  for  it  to  be  visibly  affected  by  any  uni- 
versal process.  It  is  simply  a  human  contrivance 
for  the  amusement  of  human  beings,  and  you  must 
admit  that  it  succeeds  in  its  purpose." 

"It  has  no  purpose.  It  succeeds  in  spite  of  its 
stupidity  by  sheer  force  of  the  amiable  cleverness  of 
an  overpaid  buffoon  and  the  charm  and  physical  at- 
tractions of  two  or  three  young  women." 

Old  Mole  was  forced  to  admit  the  justice  of  this 
criticism,  and  to  drive  it  home  Timmis  recited  the 
eight  lines  with  which  in  the  cave  scene  he  introduced 
the  ballet : 


Now  Sinbad's  wrecked  and  nearly  drowned,  you  see. 
He  thinks  he's  saved,  but  has  to  deal  with  me. 

120 


MARRIAGE 

I'll  wreck  him  yet  and  rack  his  soul  as  well — 

A  shipwrecked  sailor  suits  my   purpose  fell. 

I'll  catch  his  soul  and  make  it  mine  for  aye 

And  he'll  be  sorry  he  ever  stepped  this  way. 

But  who  comes  here  to  brave  my  cave's  dark  nightf 

Aha!     Oh,  curse/    It  is  the  Fairy  Light. 

Matilda  had  been  listening  to  them,  and  she  said: 

"Doesn't  she  look  lovely  when  she  comes  on  all 
in  white?    Such  a  pretty  voice  she  has,  too." 

"You  like  the  pantomime,  my  dear?" 

"Oh,  yes!" 

"Could  you  say  why?" 

"It's  pretty  and  gay,  and  it's  wonderful  to  hear 
the  people  in  that  great  big  place  laughing  and  sing- 
ing the  choruses." 

"You  see,  Timmis,  the  pantomime  has  justified  its 
existence." 

"But  what  on  earth  has  it  got  to  do  with  Sin- 
bad?" 

"Nothing.  Why  should  it?  Sinbad  is  an  Eastern 
tale.  The  pantomime  is  an  English  institution.  It 
reflects  the  English  character.  It  is  heavy,  solid, 
gross,  over-colored,  disconnected,  illogical  and  un- 
imaginative. On  the  other  hand,  it  is  humorous, 
discreetly  sensual,  varied  and  full  of  physical  activ- 
ity. It  affords  plenty  to  listen  to  and  nothing  to 
hear,  plenty  to  look  at  and  nothing  to  see,  and  it 
is  like  one  of  those  Christmas  puddings  which 
quickly  make  the  body  feel  overfed  and  provide  it 
with  no  food." 

121 


OLD    MOLE 

"Anyhow,"  said  Matilda,  "it's  a  great  success, 
and  they  say  it  will  run  until  after  Easter." 

It  did  so :  the  tunes  in  it  were  whistled  and  sung 
in  the  streets,  the  comedians'  gags  became  catch- 
words, the  principal  buffoon  kicked  off  at  a  charity 
football  match,  and,  upon  inquiry,  Old  Mole  found 
that  clerks,  schoolboys  and  students  visited  the 
theater  once  a  week,  and  that  among  the  young 
sparks  of  the  town,  sons  of  mill-owners  and  iron- 
masters, there  was  considerable  competition  for  the 
favors  of  the  chorus  ladies.  Some  of  these 
phenomena  he  remembered  having  observed  in 
Thrigsby,  and  at  least  one  of  his  old  pupils  had 
come  to  grief  through  a  lady  of  the  chorus  and  been 
expelled  by  his  affrighted  family  to  the  Colonies. 
By  the  end  of  the  fifth  week  he  was  thoroughly  sick 
of  it  all,  and  he  began  to  agree  with  Timmis  that 
the  success  of  the  show  was  very  far  from  justify- 
ing it.  It  was  so  completely  lacking  in  character  as 
to  be  demoralizing.  His  third  visit  left  him  clogged 
and  thick-witted,  as  though  he  had  been  breathing 
stale  air.  It  was  a  poison:  and  if  it  were  so  for 
him,  what  (he  asked  himself)  must  it  be  for  young 
minds  and  spirits?  .  .  .  And  yet  Matilda  throve 
in  it.  She  liked  the  work  and  she  now  liked  the 
company,  who,  being  prosperous,  were  amiable,  and 
they  liked  her.  Most  of  all,  she  loved  the  inde- 
pendence, the  passage  from  the  solid,  safe,  warmly 
tender  atmosphere  with  which  her  husband  sur- 
rounded her  to  the  heat,  the  rush  and  the  excite- 
ment of  the  theater.    When  he  left  her  at  the  stage 

133 


MARRIAGE 

door  she  would  give  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders  that 
was  almost  a  shake,  give  him  a  swift  parting  smile 
that  he  always  felt  might  have  been  given  to  a 
stranger,  and  with  a  quick  gladness  dart  through 
into  the  lighted  passage.  .  .  .  Before  many  weeks 
had  passed  she  had  letters,  flowers,  presents,  from 
unknown  admirers.  He  asked  Timmis  if  there  was 
any  harm  in  them,  and  the  actor  replied  that  it  was 
the  usual  thing,  that  women  had  to  look  after  them- 
selves in  the  theater,  and  that  these  attentions 
pleased  the  management.  They  pleased  Matilda: 
she  laughed  at  the  letters,  decorated  their  rooms 
with  the  flowers,  and  left  the  presents  with  the  stage 
doorkeeper,  who  annexed  them.  Old  Mole  defi- 
nitely decided  that  he  disliked  the  whole  business 
and  began  to  think  enviously  of  James  Boothroyd, 
who  was  religious  and  a  devil,  but  did  at  least  have 
his  own  way  in  his  own  house.  To  achieve  that  the 
first  thing  necessary  was  to  have  a  house,  and  he 
half  resolved  to  return  to  his  old  profession — not 
considering  himself  to  be  fit  for  any  other.  But  he 
never  rounded  the  resolution  and  he  never  broached 
his  thoughts  to  Matilda.  He  told  himself  that  by 
Easter  it  would  be  all  over  and  they  would  go  away, 
perhaps  abroad,  see  the  world.  .  .  .  Then  he  real- 
ized that  apart  from  Matilda  he  had  no  desires 
whatever,  that  his  affections  were  entirely  engaged 
in  her,  and  that,  further,  he  was  spasmodically 
whirled  off  his  feet  in  a  desire  that  was  altogether 
independent  of  his  will,  obedient  only  to  some  pro- 
found logic  either  of  his  own  character  or  of  the 

123 


OLD    MOLE 

world  outside  him,  to  mark  and  consider  the  ways 
of  men.  Rather  painfully  he  was  aware  of  being 
detached  from  himself,  and  sometimes  in  the  street, 
in  a  tram,  he  would  pull  himself  up  with  a  start  and 
say  to  himself: 

"I  don't  seem  to  be  caring  what  happens  to  me. 
I  seem  to  be  altogether  indifferent  to  whatever  I  am 
doing,  to  have  no  sort  of  purpose,  while  all  these 
men  and  women  round  me  are  moving  on  with  very 
definite  aims." 

Deliberately  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  men 
teaching  in  the  little  university  of  the  place  and  in 
its  grammar  school.  He  saw  himself  in  them.  He 
could  talk  their  language,  but  whereas  to  them  theii 
terms  were  precise  and  important,  to  him  they  were 
nothing  but  jargon.  .  .  .  No:  into  that  squirrel 
cage  he  would  not  go  again.  They  seemed  happy 
enough  and  pleased  with  themselves,  but,  whereas 
he  could  enter  fully  into  their  minds,  the  new  regions 
that  he  had  conquered  for  himself  were  closed  to 
them.  They  complained,  as  he  had  done  in 
Thrigsby,  of  the  materialism  of  their  city,  and  in 
moments  of  enthusiasm  talked  of  the  great  things 
they  could  do  for  the  younger  generation,  the  fu- 
ture citizens  of  the  Empire,  if  only  some  of  the 
oozing  wealth  of  the  manufacturers  could  be  di- 
verted to  their  uses.  But  the  city  had  its  own  life, 
and  they  were  no  more  a  part  of  it  than  he  had 
been  of  Thrigsby.  .  .  .  When  they  had  cured  him 
of  his  discontent  he  was  done  with  them,  and  took 
refuge  in  books.     He  bought  in  a  great  store  of 

124 


MARRIAGE 

them  and  fumbled  about  in  them  for  the  threads  of 
philosophy  he  was  seeking.  He  procured  stimula- 
tion, but  very  little  satisfaction,  and  he  was  driven 
to  the  streets  and  the  public  places.  Very  secret 
was  the  life  of  that  city.  Its  trades  were  innumer- 
able. Everything  was  manufactured  in  it  from  steel 
to  custard  powder.  It  owed  its  existence  to  the 
neighboring  coalfields,  its  organization  to  a  single 
family  of  bankers  whose  interests  were  everywhere, 
in  almost  every  trade,  in  the  land,  in  the  houses,  in 
the  factories,  in  the  supply  of  water  and  lighting, 
and  everywhere  their  interests  were  trebly  safe- 
guarded. The  city  lived  only  for  the  creation  of 
wealth  and  by  it.  With  the  distribution  of  wealth 
and  the  uses  it  was  put  to  it  had  no  concern;  nor  had 
its  citizens  time  to  consider  them.  Their  whole 
energies  were  absorbed  in  keeping  their  place  in  the 
markets  of  the  world,  and  they  were  too  exhausted 
for  real  pleasure  or  domestic  happiness.  When  Old 
Mole  considered  the  life  of  that  city  by  and  large, 
James  Boothroyd  appeared  to  him  as  its  perfect 
type.  And  yet  he  retained  his  optimism,  telling 
himself  that  all  this  furious  energy  was  going  to  the 
forging  of  the  city  of  the  future. 

"The  bees,"  he  said,  "build  the  combs  in  their 
hives,  the  ants  the  galleries  in  their  hills,  and  men 
their  sprawling  cities,  and  to  everything  under  the 
sun  there  is  a  purpose.  Let  me  not  make  the  mis- 
take of  judging  the  whole — which  I  cannot  see — by 
the  part." 

He  had  reached  this  amiable  conclusion  when 
125 


OLD   MOLE 

Carlton  Timmis  entered  his  room,  sat  down  by 
the  table  and  laid  a  bulky  quarto  envelope  on  it. 
He  was  agitated,  declined  the  proffered  cigar,  and 
broke  at  once  into  the  following  remarkable 
oration : 

"Mr.  Mole,  you  are  one  of  the  few  men  I  have 
ever  met  who  can  do  nothing  with  dignity  and  with- 
out degradation.  Therefore  I  have  come  to  you  in 
my  distress  to  make  a  somewhat  remarkable  re- 
quest. And  it  is  due  to  you  and  to  myself  to  make 
some  explanation." 

He  seemed  so  much  in  earnest,  almost  hysterical, 
and  his  great  eyes  were  blazing  with  such  a  fervor 
that  Old  Mole  could  not  but  listen. 

"My  real  name,"  said  Timmis,  "is  Cuthbert 
Jones.  My  father  is  a  small  shopkeeper  in 
Leicestershire.  He  is  a  man,  so  far  as  I  can  dis- 
cover, devoid  of  feeling,  but  with  a  taste  for  liter- 
ature and — God  knows  why,  at  this  time  of  day  I — 
the  philosophy  of  the  Edinburgh  school.  He  had 
a  cruel  sense  of  humor  and  he  made  my  mother  very 
unhappy.  He  encouraged  me  to  read,  to  write,  to 
think,  to  be  pleased  with  my  own  thoughts.  It 
amused  him,  I  fancy,  to  see  me  blown  out  with  my 
own  conceit,  so  that  he  might  have  the  pleasure  of 
pricking  my  bladder-head  and  then  distending  it 
again.  For  weeks  together  I  would  have  his  praise, 
and  then  nothing  but  the  most  bitter  gibes.  I  had 
either  to  cling  to  my  conceit  to  keep  my  head  above 
water  or  sink  into  the  depths  of  misery  and  self- 
distrust.     I  devoured  the  lives  of  illustrious  men 

126 


MARRIAGE 

and  attributed  their  fame  to  those  qualities  in  them 
which  I  was  able  to  find  in  myself.  I  sought  soli- 
tude, avoided  companions  of  my  own  age,  and  I  was 
always  desperately,  wretchedly  in  love  with  some  one 
or  other.  I  really  believed  myself  to  be  a  genius, 
or  rather  I  used  to  count  over  my  symptoms  and 
decide  one  day  that  I  was,  the  next  that  I  was  not. 
All  this  roused  my  father  to  such  a  malicious  de- 
light, and  with  his  teasing  he  made  my  life  so  intol- 
erable that  at  last  I  could  stand  it  no  longer,  and  I 
ran  away.  I  walked  to  London,  and  then,  after 
applying  in  vain  for  work  at  the  newspaper  offices, 
I  obtained  a  situation  in  a  theater  as  a  call  boy.  I 
could  not  possibly  live  on  what  I  earned,  and  should 
have  been  in  a  bad  way  but  for  a  kind  creature,  a 
dresser,  who  lodged  me  in  her  house,  took  my  wages 
in  return,  and  allowed  me  pocket  money  and  money 
for  my  clothes.  I  wrote  to  my  father  and  received 
an  extraordinary  letter  in  which  he  applauded  my 
action  and  expressed  his  belief  that  nothing  could 
prevent  a  man  of  genius  from  coming  to  the  top. 
'It  is  as  impossible  to  keep  a  bad  man  up  as  to  keep 
a  good  man  down,'  he  said.  I  have  neither  gone 
down  nor  up,  Mr.  Mole.  As  I  have  grown  older 
I  have  slipped  into  one  precarious  employment  after 
another.  No  one  pays  any  attention  to  me,  no  one, 
except  yourself,  has  ever  troubled  to  discover  my 
thoughts  on  any  subject,  and  often,  when  I  have  been 
inclined  to  think  myself  the  most  miserable  of  men, 
I  have  found  correction  in  the  memory  of  my  boyish 
belief  in  my  genius.  .  .  .    Such  changes  of  fortune 

127 


OLD    MOLE 

as  I  have  had  have  come  to  me  through  women. 
All  the  kindness  I  ever  received  came  through  them, 
and  every  disaster  that  has  crushed  me  has  arisen 
through  my  inability  to  stop  myself  from  falling  in 
love  with  them.  .  .  .  You  will  understand  what  I 
mean  when  I  talk  of  the  life  of  the  mind.  That  life 
has  always  been  with  me,  and  it  has  perhaps  been 
my  only  real  life.  I  have  had  great  adventures  in 
it.  I  have  aimed  and  wrestled  and  struggled  toward 
a  goal  that  has  many  times  seemed  to  me  imme- 
diately attainable. " 

He  paused  and  brushed  back  his  hair,  and  his 
eyes  set  into  an  expression  of  extraordinary  wistful 
longing  and  into  his  voice  came  a  sweetness  most 
musical  and  moving. 

"There  is,  I  believe,  a  condition  within  the  reach 
of  all  men  wherein  the  selfish  self  is  shed,  the  bar- 
rier broken  down  between  a  man  and  his  vision  and 
purpose,  so  that  his  whole  force  can  be  concentrated 
upon  his  object  and  his  every  deed  and  every  thought 
becomes  an  act  of  love.  I  have  many  a  time  come 
within  reach  of  this  condition,  but  always  just  when 
I  seemed  most  sure  I  have  toppled  over  head  and 
ears  in  love  with  some  woman,  whom  in  a  very 
short  space  of  time  I  despised  and  detested.  When 
I  met  you  I  was  uplifted  and  exalted  and  come 
nearer  to  my  goal  than  ever  before,  and  now,  more 
fatuously,  more  idiotically  than  ever,  I  am  in  love. 
...  I  give  it  up.  I  am  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  I  am  one  of  those  unhappy  beings  who  are  con- 
demned to  live  between  one  state  and  the  other,  to 

128 


MARRIAGE 

be  neither  a  slave  bent  on  eating,  drinking,  sleeping 
and  the  grosser  pleasures,  nor  a  free  man  satisfying 
his  every  lust  and  every  desire,  by  the  way,  only  the 
more  sturdily  and  mightily  to  go  marching  on  with 
the  great  army  of  friends,  lovers  and  comrades.  .  .  . 
In  short,  Mr.  Mole,  I  am  done  for." 

"Well,  well."  Old  Mole  was  aware  of  the  en- 
tire inadequacy  of  this  either  as  comment  or  as  con- 
solation, but  he  was  baffled  by  the  self-absorption 
which  had  gone  to  the  making  of  this  elaborate 
analysis:  and  yet  he  had  been  stirred  by  the  Demon 
King's  vision  of  the  possibilities  of  human  nature 
and  roused  by  the  words  "every  deed  and  every 
thought  an  act  of  love."  There  was  a  platonic 
golden  idealism  about  it  that  lifted  him  back  into 
his  own  youth,  his  own  always  comfortable  dreams, 
and,  contrasting  himself  with  Timmis  (or  Jones), 
he  saw  how  immune  his  early  years  had  been  from 
suffering.  Timmis  might  be  done  for,  but  if  anyone 
was  to  blame  it  was  his  malicious,  erratic  father. 
Then,  with  his  mind  taking  a  wide  sweep,  he  saw 
that  there  could  be  no  question  of  blame  or  of 
attaching  it,  since  that  father  had  also  had  a  father 
who  perhaps  suffered  from  something  worse  than 
Edinburgh  philosophy.  There  could  be  no  ques- 
tion of  blame.  The  world  was  so  constructed  that 
Timmis  (or  Jones)  was  bound  to  be  out  of  luck  and 
to  fail,  just  as  it  seemed  to  be  in  the  order  of  cre- 
ation that  he  himself,  H.  J.  Beenham,  should  be 
comfortable  and  beyond  the  reach  of  the  cares  most 
common  to  mankind.    There  were  fat  kine  and  lean 

129 


OLD    MOLE 

kine,  and,  come  what  may,  the  lean  kine  would  still 
light  upon  the  meager  pasture. 

There  be  fat  men  and  lean  men,  but  men  have 
this  advantage  over  kine,  that  they  can  understand 
and  help  each  other. 

So  Old  Mole  nursed  his  knee  and  told  himself 
that  Timmis  was  obviously  sincere  in  believing  him- 
self to  be  done  for,  and  therefore  for  all  practical 
purposes  he  was  done  for,  and  there  was  no  other 
useful  course  to  pursue  than  to  listen  to  what  fur- 
ther he  might  have  to  say,  and  then,  from  his  point 
of  view,  to  consider  the  position  and  see  if  there 
were  not  something  he  had  overlooked  in  his  excited 
despair. 

Timmis  concluded  his  tale,  and  nothing  had  es- 
caped him.  His  own  opinion  of  his  moral  condition 
must  be  accepted :  as  to  his  material  state,  that  could 
not  possibly  be  worse.  He  had  loved,  wooed  and 
won  a  lady  in  the  chorus  upon  whom  the  manager 
had  cast  a  favorable  eye  and  the  light  of  his  patron- 
age. There  had  been  a  scene,  an  altercation,  al- 
most blows.  Timmis's  engagement  ceased  on  the 
spot,  and,  as  he  said,  he  now  understood  why  actors 
put  up  with  so  much  insult,  insolence  and  browbeat- 
ing on  the  part  of  their  managers.  He  had  three 
shillings  in  his  pocket  with  which  to  pay  his  rent 
and  face  the  world,  and  he  was  filled  with  disgust 
of  women,  of  the  theater,  of  himself,  and  would 
Mr.  Mole  be  so  kind  as  to  lend  him  fifty  pounds 
with  which  to  make  a  new  start  in  a  new  country; 
he  believed  that  in  fresh  surroundings,  thousands 

130 


MARRIAGE 

of  miles  away  from  any  philosophy  or  poetry,  or  so- 
called  art,  he  could  descend  to  a  lower  level  of  ex- 
istence, and  perhaps,  without  the  intervention  of 
another  disastrous  love  affair,  redeem  his  false  start. 
He  was  not,  he  said,  asking  for  something  for  noth- 
ing— no  man  born  and  bred  in  England  could  ever 
bring  himself  to  ask  for  or  to  expect  that! — he  was 
prepared  to  give  security  of  a  sort  which  only  a  man 
of  intelligence  and  knowledge  of  affairs  would  ac- 
cept. He  had  brought  a  play  with  him  in  typescript. 
It  was  called  "Lossie  Loses."  In  his  time  Timmis 
had  written  many  plays,  and  they  were  all  worthless 
except  this  one.  Most  of  them  were  good  in  inten- 
tion but  bad  in  performance :  he  had  burned  them. 
This  was  bad  in  intention  but  good  in  execution,  and 
one  of  these  days  it  would  become  a  considerable 
property.  An  agent  in  London  had  a  copy,  he  said, 
and  he  would  write  to  this  man  and  tell  him  that  he 
had  transferred  all  his  rights  to  Mr.  Mole.  He 
then  produced  a  pompous  little  agreement  assigning 
his  property  and  stating  the  consideration,  wrote  his 
name  on  it  with  a  large  flourishing  hand,  and  passed 
it  over  with  the  play  to  his  friend  in  need.  After  a 
moment's  hesitation,  during  which  he  squashed  his 
desire  to  improve  the  occasion  with  a  few  general 
remarks,  Old  Mole  thought  of  the  unlucky  creature's 
three  shillings  and  of  the  deliverance  that  fifty 
pounds  would  be  to  him,  and  at  once  produced  his 
checkbook  and  wrote  out  a  check. 

No  man  has  yet  discovered  the  art  of  taking  a 
check  gracefully.    Timmis  shuffled  it  into  his  pocket, 

*3* 


OLD   MOLE 

hemmed  and  ha'd  for  a  few  seconds,  and  then 
bolted. 

Old  Mole  took  up  his  play  and  began  to  read  it. 
It  did  not  interest  him,  but  he  could  not  put  it  down. 
There  was  not  a  true  emotion  in  it,  not  a  reasonable 
man  or  woman,  but  it  was  full  of  surprising  tricks 
and  turns  and  quiddities,  was  perpetually  slopping 
over  from  sugary  tenderness  to  shy  laughter,  and 
all  the  false  emotions  in  it  were  introduced  so  irrele- 
vantly as  never  to  be  thoroughly  cloying,  and  indeed 
sometimes  to  give  almost  that  sensation  of  delighted 
surprise  which  comes  truly  only  from  the  purest  and 
happiest  art.  Not  until  it  was  some  moments  out 
of  his  hands  did  Old  Mole  recognize  the  thing  in  all 
its  horrid  spuriousness.  Then  he  flung  it  from  him, 
scowled  at  it,  fumed  over  it,  and  finally  put  it  away 
and  resolved  to  think  no  more  about  it  or  of  Carl- 
ton Timmis. 

That  night  when  he  met  Matilda  she  was  in  high 
delight.  The  "second  girl"  was  ill;  her  understudy 
had  been  called  away  to  the  sick  bed  of  her  only 
surviving  aunt,  and  she  had  been  chosen  to  play  the 
part  at  a  matinee  to  see  if  she  could  do  it.  Her  name 
would  not  be  on  the  program,  but  she  would  have 
ten  lines  to  speak  and  one  verse  in  a  quartet  to  sing, 
and  a  dance  with  the  third  comedian.  Wasn't 
it  splendid?  And  couldn't  they  go  and  have  sup- 
per at  the  new  hotel  just  to  celebrate  it?  All  the 
girls  were  talking  about  the  hotel,  and  she  had  never 
been  to  a  real  restaurant. 

It  is  hard  not  to  feel  generous  when  you  have 
132 


MARRIAGE 

given  away  fifty  pounds,  and  Old  Mole  yielded. 
They  had  oysters  and  grilled  kidneys,  and  they 
drank  champagne.  Matilda  had  never  tasted  it 
before  and  she  made  a  little  ceremony  of  it.  It  was 
so  pretty  (she  said),  such  a  lovely  color,  and  the 
bubbles  were  so  funnily  busy.  He  drank  too  much 
of  it  and  became  amorous.  Matilda  was  wonder- 
fully pretty  and  amusing  in  her  excitement,  and  he 
could  not  take  his  eyes  off  her. 

"Tell  me,"  he  said,  "do  you  really  like  this 
life?" 

"I  love  it.  It's  something  like  what  I've  always 
wanted  to  be.  In  some  ways  it's  better  and  some 
ways  it's  worse." 

"I  don't  see  much  of  you  now." 

"You  like  me  all  the  better  when  you  do  see  me." 

"We're  not  getting  on  much  with  your  educa- 
tion." 

"Education  be  blowed." 

He  was  distressed  and  wished  she  had  not  said 
"be  blowed."  She  saw  his  discomfort  and  leaned 
forward  and  patted  his  hand. 

"Don't  you  fret,  my  dear.  There's  a  good  time 
coming." 

But  unaccountably  he  was  depressed.  He  was 
feeling  sorry  he  had  brought  her.  There  was  a 
vulgarity,  a  sensuousness  in  the  glitter  and  gilt  of 
the  restaurant  that  sorted  ill  with  what  in  his  heart 
he  felt  and  was  proud  to  feel  for  Matilda.  He  was 
sorry  that  she  liked  it,  but  saw,  too,  that  she  could 
not  help  but  be  pleased  since  to  her  it  was  all  novel 

133 


OLD   MOLE 

and  dazzling.  Hardest  of  all  to  bear,  he  was  forced 
to  admit  that  he  had  no  immediate  alternative  to 
lay  before  her. 

They  drove  home  in  a  taxi,  and  she  caressed  him 
and  soothed  him  and  told  him  he  was  the  dearest, 
kindest,  gentlest  and  most  considering  husband  any 
girl  could  have  the  luck  to  find.  And  once  again, 
ominously,  he  was  struck  by  the  strangeness  of  the 
word  husband  on  her  lips.  For  a  short  while  he 
was  haunted  by  the  figure  of  Timmis,  with  his  dis- 
gust of  women  even  while  he  loved  one  of  them. 
But  he  shook  away  from  that  and  told  himself  that 
if  there  was  something  lacking  in  his  relations  with 
his  wife  the  fault  must  lie  with  him,  for  he  at  least 
had  a  certain  scale  of  spiritual  values,  while  she 
had  none,  nor,  from  her  upbringing,  could  she  have 
had  the  opportunity  of  discovering  any  in  herself 
or  her  relations  with  those  about  her. 

She  said  he  thought  too  much,  but  without 
thought,  without  passionate  endeavor,  how  could 
marriage  fail  to  sink  into  brutish  habit?  Was  that 
too  fastidious?  Since  there  is  an  animal  element  in 
human  life,  were  it  not  as  well  to  deal  with  it  frankly 
and  healthily  on  an  animal  level?  That  offended 
his  logic.  There  could  be  no  element  in  life  that 
was  not  harmonious  with  every  other  element.  The 
gross  indulgence  of  sex  had  always  been  offensive 
to  him,  a  stupid  protraction  of  the  heated  imprison- 
ment of  adolescence,  a  calamity  that  must  result  in 
arrested  development.  Marriage  had  forced  him 
to  think  about  these  things,  and  he  was  determined, 

*34 


MARRIAGE 

so  far  as  in  him  lay,  to  think  about  them  clearly, 
without  dragging  in  literature,  or  sentiment,  or 
prejudice.  In  marriage,  admittedly,  lay  the  highest 
spiritual  relationship  known,  or  ever  to  be  known, 
to  human  beings.  In  marriage,  obviously,  the  body 
had  its  share.  If  the  body's  share  were  regarded 
as  separate  from  the  rest,  as  an  unfortunate  but  not 
unpleasant  necessity,  then,  being  separate,  how  could 
it  be  anything  but  a  clog  upon  the  full  and  true 
union?  It  was  impossible  for  him  to  think  of  sex 
as  a  clot  in  the  otherwise  free  mating  of  souls,  and, 
indeed,  his  experience  assured  him  that  the  exercise 
of  his  sex  gave  him  not  only  the  most  wonderful 
deliverance  from  physical  obsessions,  but  also  from 
the  uneasy  and  unprofitable  brooding  of  the  mind. 

But  he  was  uneasy  and  anxious  in  his  marriage, 
came  to  believe  that  it  was  because  his  wife  was 
content  with  so  little  when  he  desired  to  give  her  so 
much  more,  and  blamed  himself  for  his  apparent 
inability  to  set  forth  his  gift  of  emotion  and  human 
fellowship  in  terms  that  she  could  understand. 

He  went  to  see  her  play  her  part  in  the  pan- 
tomime and  suffered  agonies  of  nervousness  for  her. 
She  delivered  her  ten  lines  without  mishap,  sang 
her  part  in  the  quartet  inaudibly,  and  her  dance  in 
the  duet  was  applauded  so  loudly  that  at  last  the 
conductor  tapped  his  little  desk,  and  Matilda  came 
tripping  forth  again  with  her  comedian,  bowed, 
kissed  her  hand,  and  went  through  the  movements — 
absurd,  banal,  pointless  as  they  were — with  a  shy 


OLD    MOLE 

grace  and  a  breathless,  childish  pleasure  that  were 
charming.  He  was  swept  into  the  collective  pleas- 
ure of  the  audience  and  clapped  his  hands  with  them 
and  felt  that  the  Matilda  there  on  the  stage  was  not 
his  Matilda,  but  a  creature  belonging  to  another 
world,  of  whose  existence  he  was  aware,  while  noth- 
ing in  his  world  could  have  any  influence  or  any 
bearing  on  her  whatsoever.  .  .  .  He  would  meet 
her  at  the  stagedoor,  and  she  would  be  his  Matilda, 
while  the  other  remained  behind,  as  it  were,  inani- 
mate in  her  charmed  existence.  Both  were  infused 
with  life  from  the  same  source  of  life;  the  essence 
passed  from  one  to  the  other,  and  therefore  there 
was  not  one  Matilda  but  three  Matildas. 

He  lost  himself  in  this  mystic  conception  and  was 
timely  rescued  by  her  meeting  him  as  he  passed 
through  the  vestibule.  She  took  his  arm  and  hugged 
it  and  asked  him  if  he  liked  it. 

"Wasn't  it  good  getting  an  encore?  That  dance 
has  only  been  encored  six  times  before." 

He  told  her  how  nervous  he  had  been. 

"I  wasn't  a  bit  nervous  once  I  was  on,  but  in  the 
wings  it  was  awful." 

She  said  she  wanted  to  take  him  behind  the  scenes 
so  that  he  could  see  what  a  real  theater  was  like. 
They  passed  through  the  stagedoor  and  along  nar- 
row, dusty  passages,  up  steep  flights  of  stone  stairs, 
she  chatting  gaily  in  spite  of  the  frequent  notices  en- 
joining silence,  and  every  now  and  then  they  were 
stopped  and  Matilda  was  embraced  by  male  and 
female  alike,  and  all  the  women  said  how  glad  they 

136 


MARRIAGE 

were,  and  the  men  said:  "good  egg"  or  "top  hole." 
Suddenly  out  of  the  narrow,  dusty  ways  they  came 
upon  the  stage,  huge  and  eerie.  There  was  only  a 
faint  light,  the  curtain  was  up,  and  there  were  tiny 
women  in  the  auditorium  dropping  white  cloths  from 
the  galleries  and  shrouding  all  the  seats.  Never 
had  Old  Mole  had  such  a  sense  of  emptiness  and 
desolation.  A  man's  voice  came  from  far  up  above 
the  stage,  and  it  sounded  like  a  thin  ghostly  mock- 
ing. There  was  a  creaking  and  a  rasping,  and  a 
great  sheet  of  painted  canvas  descended,  the  wings 
were  set  in  place,  and  a  flight  of  stairs  was  wheeled 
up  and  clamped:  the  scene  was  set  for  the  opening 
of  the  pantomime.  Suddenly  the  lights  were  turned 
on.  Matilda  began  to  hum  the  opening  bars  of  the 
overture.  Old  Mole  blinked.  He  was  nearly 
blinded.  The  colors  in  the  scenery  glowed  in  the 
light.  He  had  the  most  alarming  sense  of  being  cut 
off  from  his  surroundings,  of  being  projected,  thrust 
forward  toward  the  mysterious,  empty  auditorium 
with  its  shrouded  seats  and  the  little  women  bustling 
up  and  down  in  it.  Almost  irresistibly  he  was  im- 
pelled to  shout  to  them,  to  engage  their  attention, 
to  make  them  look  at  him.  His  mind  eased  and  a 
thrill  of  importance  ran  through  him:  never  had 
he  seemed  to  himself  to  bulk  so  large.  He  was 
almost  frightened:  the  immense  power  of  the 
machinery,  the  lighted  stage  and  the  darkened 
auditorium  alarmed  and  weighed  crushingly  upon 
him. 

"It's  like  a  vault,"  said  Matilda,  "with  no  one 

137 


OLD   MOLE 

in  front.  But  when  it's  full,  on  a  Saturday 
night,  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  faces,  it's  won- 
derful." 

To  him  it  was  not  at  all  like  a  vault,  but  like  an 
engine  disconnected  from  its  power.  The  mind  ab- 
hors a  vacuum,  and  he  was  striving  to  fill  the  empti- 
ness all  about  him,  thronging  the  auditorium  with 
imaginary  people,  and  struggling  to  occupy  the  magic 
area  of  light  in  which  he  stood.  In  vain:  he  was 
impotent.     He  felt  trapped. 

"Let  us  go,"  he  said. 

On  the  stairs  they  met  the  manager. 

"Hullo,  Tilly,"  he  said.    "You're  a  good  girl." 

"Thanks." 

Old  Mole  hated  the  young  man,  for  he  was  com- 
mon and  loose  in  manner  and  in  no  way  worthy  of 
the  enchanted  Matilda  or  of  the  marvelous  organ- 
ism, the  theater,  in  which  she  seemed  to  live  so  eas- 
ily and  freely. 

His  thoughts  were  much  too  confused  for  him  to 
impart  them  to  her,  and  he  was  vastly  relieved 
when  they  left  the  theater  and  she  became  his  Ma- 
tilda. 

That  night  he  read  to  her.  He  had  been  de- 
lighting in  "Lucretius,"  and  he  had  marked  pass- 
ages, and  he  turned  to  that  beginning: 

"lam  iam  non  domus  accipiet  te  laeta,  neque  uxor 
Optima.  .  .  ." 

He  translated  for  her: 

"  'Now  no  more  shall  a  glad  home  and  a  true 
wife  welcome   thee,   nor  darling  children   race   to 

138 


MARRIAGE 

snatch  thy  first  kisses  and  touch  thy  heart  with  a 
sweet  silent  content;  no  more  mayest  thou  be  pros- 
perous in  thy  doings  and  a  defence  to  thine  own; 
alas  and  woeP  say  they,  'one  disastrous  day  has 
taken  all  these  prizes  of  thy  life  away  from  thee' — 
but  thereat  they  do  not  add  this,  'and  now  no  more 
does  any  longing  for  these  things  assail  thee.'  This 
did  their  thought  but  clearly  see  and  their  speech 
follow  they  would  deliver  themselves  from  much 
burning  of  the  heart  and  dread.  'Thou,  indeed,  as 
thou  art  sunk  in  the  sleep  of  death,  wilt  so  be  for 
the  rest  of  the  ages,  severed  from  all  weariness  and 
pain.'  .  .  . 

"Yet  again,  were  the  nature  of  things  to  utter  a 
voice  and  thus  with  her  own  lips  upbraid  one  of  us, 
'What  ails  thee,  O  mortal,  that  thou  fallest  into 
such  vain  lamentation?  Why  weep  and  wail  at 
death?  For  has  thy  past  life  and  overspent  been 
sweet  to  thee,  and  not  all  the  good  thereof,  as  though 
poured  into  a  cracked  pitcher,  has  run  through  and 
perished  without  joy,  why  dost  thou  not  retire  like 
a  banqueter  filled  with  life,  and,  calmly,  O  fool,  take 
thy  sleep?  But  if  all  thou  hast  had  is  perished  and 
spilled  and  thy  life  is  hateful,  why  seekest  thou  yet 
to  add  more  which  shall  once  again  all  perish  and 
fall  joylessly  away?  Why  not  rather  make  an  end 
of  life  and  labor?  For  there  is  nothing  more  that 
I  can  contrive  and  invent  for  thy  delight;  all  things 
are  the  same  forever.  Even  were  thy  body  not  yet 
withered,  nor  thy  limbs  weary  and  worn,  yet  all 
things  remain  the  same,  didst  thou  live  on  through 

139 


OLD   MOLE 

all  the  generations.  Nay,  even  wert  thou  never 
doomed  to  die' — what  is  our  answer ?" 

"Don't  you  believe  in  God?"  asked  Matilda. 

It  came  like  a  question  from  a  child,  and  he  had 
the  adult's  difficulty  in  answering  it,  the  doubt  as  to 
the  interpretation  that  will  be  put  upon  his  reply. 

"I  believe,"  he  said  slowly,  "in  the  life  everlast- 
ing, but  my  life  has  a  beginning  and  an  end." 

"And  you  don't  think  you  go  to  Heaven  or  Hell 
when  you're — when  you're  dead?" 

"Into  the  ground,"  he  said. 

Matilda  shivered,  and  she  looked  crushed  and 
miserable. 

"Why  did  you  read  that  to  me?"  she  said  at  last. 
"I  was  so  happy  before.  .  .  .  I've  always  had  a 
feeling  that  you  weren't  like  ordinary  people." 

And  she  seemed  to  wait  for  him  to  say  some- 
thing, but  his  mind  harped  only  on  the  words :  "For 
there  is  nothing  more  that  I  can  contrive  and  invent 
for  thy  delight,"  and  he  said  nothing.  She  rose 
wearily  and  took  her  hat  and  coat  and  the  musquash 
collar  that  had  been  her  pride,  and  left  him. 

For  hours  he  sat  over  the  fire,  brooding,  flashing 
occasionally  into  clear  logical  sequences  of  thought, 
but  for  the  most  part  browsing  and  drowsing,  turn- 
ing over  in  his  mind  women  and  marriage  and  the 
theater  and  genius,  the  authentic  voice  of  the  nature 
of  things,  the  spirit  of  the  universe  that  sweeps  into 
a  man's  brain  and  heart  and  burns  away  all  the 
thoughts  of  his  own  small  life  and  fills  him  with  a 
music  that  rings  out  and  resounds  and  echoes  and 

140 


MARRIAGE 

falls  for  the  most  part  upon  deaf  ears  or  upon  ears 
filled  only  with  the  clatter  of  the  marketplace  or 
the  sweet  whisperings  of  secret,  treacherous  de- 
sires. And  he  thought  of  the  engines  in  that  city, 
day  and  night,  ceaselessly  humming  and  throbbing, 
weaving  stuffs  and  forging  tools  and  weapons  for  the 
clothing  and  feeding  of  the  bodies  of  men:  the  ter- 
rifying ingenuity  of  it  all,  the  force  and  the  skill, 
the  ceaseless  division  and  subdivision  of  labor,  the 
multiplication  of  processes,  the  ever-increasing  va- 
riety of  possessions  and  outward  shows  and  ma- 
terial things.  But  through  all  the  changes  in  the 
activities  of  men,  behind  all  their  new  combinations 
of  forces  "all  things  are  the  same  forever  and 
ever.  .  .  ."  He  remembered  then  that  he  had 
hurt  Matilda,  that  she  had  resented  his  not  being 
"like  ordinary  people,"  resented,  that  is,  his  ac- 
ceptance of  the  unchanging  order  of  things,  his 
refusal  to  confuse  surface  change  with  the  mighty 
ebb  and  flow  of  life.  It  was,  he  divined,  that  she 
had  never  reached  up  to  any  large  idea  and  had 
never  conceived  of  any  life,  individual  or  general, 
outside  her  own.  To  her,  then,  the  life  everlasting 
must  mean  her  life,  and  he  regretted  having  used 
that  phrase.  She  was  concerned,  then,  entirely  with 
her  own  existence — (and  with  his  in  so  far  as  it 
overlapped  hers) — and  life  to  her  was  either  "fun" 

or  something  unthinkable It  seemed  to  him 

that  he  was  near  understanding  her,  and  he  loved 
her  more  than  ever,  and  a  rare  warmth  flooded  his 
thoughts  and  they  took  on  a  life  of  their  own,  were 

141 


OLD   MOLE 

bodied  forth,  and  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy,  thrilling  and 
triumphant,  he  had  the  illusion  of  being  lifted  out 
of  himself,  of  soaring  and  roaming  free  and  with  a 
power  altogether  new  to  him,  a  power  whereof  he 
was  both  creator  and  creature,  he  saw  out  of  his  own 
circumscribed  area  of  life  into  another  life  that  was 
no  replica  of  this,  but  yet  was  of  the  same  order, 
smaller,  neater,  trimmer,  concentrated,  and  distilled. 
There  was  brilliant  color  in  it  and  light  and  shade 
sharply  distinct,  and  everything  in  it — houses,  trees, 
mountains,  hills,  clouds — was  rounded  and  precise : 
there  was  movement  in  it,  but  all  ordered  and  pur- 
poseful. The  sun  shone,  and  round  the  corner 
there  was  a  selection  of  moons,  full,  half,  new,  and 
crescent,  and  both  sun  and  moon  could  be  put  away 
so  that  there  should  be  darkness.  As  for  stars, 
there  were  as  many  as  he  chose  to  sprinkle  on  the 
sky.  ...  At  first  he  could  only  gaze  at  this  world 
in  wonder.  It  sailed  before  him  in  a  series  of  the 
most  dignified  evolutions,  displaying  all  its  treas- 
ures to  him;  mountains  bowed  and  clouds  curtseyed, 
and  Eastern  cities  came  drifting  into  view,  and  ships 
and  islands;  and  there  were  palaces  and  the  gar- 
dens of  philosophers,  sea  beaches  whereon  maidens 
sang  and  mermaids  combed  their  hair;  and  there 
were  great  staircases  up  and  down  which  moved 
stately  personages  in  silence,  so  that  it  was  clear 
there  was  some  great  ceremony  toward,  but  before 
he  could  discover  the  meaning  of  it  all  the  world 
moved  on  and  displayed  another  aspect  of  its  seem- 
ingly endless  variety.    And  he  was  sated  with  it  and 

.142 


MARRIAGE 

asked  for  it  to  stop,  and  at  last  with  a  mighty  effort 
he  became  more  its  creator  than  its  creature,  and,  as 
though  he  had  just  remembered  the  Open  Sesame, 
it  stayed  in  its  course.  It  stayed,  and  in  a  narrow, 
dark  street,  with  one  flickering  light  in  it,  and  the 
brilliant  light  of  a  great  boulevard  at  the  end  of  it, 
he  saw  an  old  white-bearded  man  with  a  pack  on 
his  back  and  a  staff  in  his  hand.  And  the  old  man 
knew  that  he  was  there,  and  he  beckoned  to  him  to 
come  into  the  street.  So  he  went  and  followed  him, 
and  without  a  word  they  turned  through  a  little  dark 
gateway  and  across  up  a  courtyard  and  up  into  a  gar- 
ret, and  the  old  man  gave  him  a  sack  to  sit  on  and 
lifted  his  packet  from  his  back  and  out  of  it  built 
up  a  little  open  box,  and  hung  a  curtain  before  it. 
Old  Mole  settled  on  his  sack  and  opened  his  lips  to 
speak  to  the  old  man,  but  he  had  disappeared. 
The  curtain  rose. 


Ill 

INTERLUDE 

/  may  have  lost  my  judgment  and  my  wits, 
but  I  must  confess  I  liked  that  play.  There 
was  something  in  it. 

THE   SEAGULL 


Ill 

INTERLUDE 

Go  now,  go  into  the  land 

Where  the  mind  is  free  and  the  heart 
Blooms,  and  the  fairy  band 

Airily  troops  to  the  dusty   mart; 
And  the  chatter  and  money-changing 

Die  away.     In  fancy  ranging, 
Let  all  the  inmost  honey  of  the  world 

Sweeten  thy  faith,  to  see  unfurl'd 
Love's  glory  shown  in  every  little  part 

Of  life;    and ',   seeing,    understand. 

BY  a  roadside,  at  the  end  of  a  village,  beneath 
the  effigy  of  a  god,  sat  a  lean,  brown  old 
man.  He  had  no  covering  for  his  head  and 
the  skin  of  the  soles  of  his  feet  was  thickened  and 
scarred.  In  front  of  him  were  two  little  boxes,  and 
on  his  knees  there  lay  open  a  great  book  from  which 
he  was  reading  aloud  in  an  unknown  tongue. 

From  the  village  there  came  a  young  man,  richly 
clad  and  gay,  attended  by  two  slaves.  He  saluted 
the  effigy  of  the  god  and  asked  the  old  man  what  he 
might  be  reading.  The  old  man  replied  that  it  was 
the  oldest  book  in  the  world  and  the  truest,  and 
when  he  was  questioned  about  the  boxes  he  said 

147 


OLD    MOLE 

that  one  of  them  contained  riches  and  the  other 
power.  The  young  man  looked  into  them  and  saw 
nothing.  He  laughed  and  spoke  to  one  of  his  slaves, 
saying  the  old  and  the  poor  must  have  their  fancies 
since  there  was  nothing  else  for  them,  and,  upon 
his  orders,  the  slave  filled  the  boxes  with  rice,  and  at 
once  there  sprung  up  two  mighty  trees.  The  slaves 
fled  howling  and  the  young  man  abased  himself 
before  the  effigy  of  the  god  and  stole  away  on  his 
knees,  praying.  The  old  man  raised  his  hands  in 
thanksgiving  for  the  shade  of  the  trees,  lifted  them 
out  of  the  boxes,  and  once  more  arranged  them 
before  him. 

In  the  wood  hard  by  arose  the  sound  of  high 
words  and  out  upon  the  road,  brawling  and  storm- 
ing, tumbled  two  youths,  comely  and  tall  and  strong. 
They  stopped  before  the  old  man  and  appealed  to 
him. 

"Our  father,"  said  he  who  first  found  breath,  "is 
a  poor  man  of  this  village,  and  I  am  Peter  and  my 
brother  is  Simon.  Two  days  ago,  on  a  journey,  we 
saw  the  picture  of  the  loveliest  maiden  in  the  world. 
We  do  not  know  her  name,  but  we  are  both  deter- 
mined to  marry  her,  and  there  is  no  other  desire 
left  in  us.  We  have  fought  and  wrestled  and  swum 
for  her,  but  can  reach  no  conclusion.  I  will  not  yield 
and  he  will  not  yield.  Is  all  our  life  to  be  spent  in 
wrangling?" 

The  old  man  closed  his  book  and  replied: 

"The  loveliest  maiden  in  the  world  is  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  the  greatest  of  emperors.     If  you  are 

148 


INTERLUDE 

the  sons  of  poor  men  how  can  you  ever  hope  to  lift 
eyes  to  her?  Look  now  into  these  boxes  and  you 
shall  be  raised  to  a  height  by  which  you  shall  see 
the  Emperor's  daughter  and  not  be  hidden  in  the 
dust  of  her  chariot." 

They  looked  into  the  boxes,  and  Simon  saw  in  the 
one  a  piece  of  gold,  but  Peter  looked  as  well  into 
the  other,  and  in  it  he  saw  the  face  of  his  beloved 
princess  and  had  no  thought  of  all  else.  Simon 
asked  for  the  first  box  and  Peter  for  the  second, 
and  they  received  them  and  went  their  ways,  Simon 
to  the  village  and  Peter  out  into  the  world,  each 
gazing  fascinated  into  his  box. 

"To  him  who  desireth  little,  little  is  given,"  said 
the  old  man.  "And  to  him  who  desireth  much,  much 
is  given;  but  to  neither  according  to  the  letter  of 
his  desire." 

By  the  time  he  reached  his  village  Simon  had  five 
gold  pieces  in  his  pocket,  and  as  soon  as  he  took 
one  piece  from  the  box  another  came  in  its  place. 
He  lent  money  to  every  one  in  the  village  at  a  large 
rate  of  interest  and  was  soon  the  master  of  it.  There 
began  to  be  talk  of  him  in  the  town  ten  leagues 
away  and  there  came  men  to  ask  him  for  money. 
He  moved  to  the  town  and  built  himself  a  big  house, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  he  began  to  look  to  the 
capital  of  the  country. 

When  he  moved  to  the  capital  he  had  six  houses 
in  different  parts  of  the  country,  racehorses,  picture 
galleries,  mines,  factories,  newspapers,  and  he 
headed  the  list  of  subscribers  to  the  hospitals  patron- 

149 


OLD    MOLE 

ized  by  the  Royal  Family.  At  first,  in  the  great 
city,  he  was  diffident  and  shy  among  the  illustrious 
personages  with  whom  he  fraternized,  but  it  was  not 
long  before  he  discovered  that  they  were  just  as  sus- 
ceptible to  the  pinch  of  money  as  the  carpenter  and 
the  priest  and  the  bailiff  and  the  fruiterer  in  his 
village.  It  was  quite  easy  to  buy  the  control  of 
these  important  people  without  their  ever  having  to 
face  the  unpleasant  fact.  More  than  one  beautiful 
lady,  among  them  a  duchess  and  a  prima  donna  of 
surpassing  loveliness,  endeavored  to  cajole  him  and 
to  discover  his  secret.  In  vain;  he  could  not  for- 
get the  Princess  Elizabeth,  and  now  ambition 
spurred  him  on.  He  was  wearying  of  the  ease  with 
which  fame  and  position  and  the  highest  society 
could  be  bought,  and  began  to  lust  for  power.  With 
his  native  peasant  shrewdness  he  saw  that  society 
consisted  of  the  People,  of  persons  of  talent  and 
cunning  above  them,  of  the  descendants  of  persons 
of  talent  and  cunning  left  high  and  dry  beyond  the 
reach  of  want,  of  ornamental  families  set  at  the 
head  of  the  nations,  of  a  few  ingenious  minds  who 
(so  far  as  there  was  any  direction)  governed  the 
workings  and  interlockings  of  all  the  parts  of  the 
whole.  They  had  control  of  all  the  sources  of 
money  except  his  box,  and  he  determined,  to  relieve 
his  boredom  and  also  as  a  means  of  reaching  his 
Princess,  to  pit  his  power  against  theirs. 

He  was  never  ashamed  of  his  mother,  and  she 
came  to  stay  with  him  once  a  year  for  a  week,  but 
she  never  ceased  to  lament  the  loss  of  her  other  son, 

150 


INTERLUDE 

Peter,  from  whom  no  word  had  come.  One  night 
she  had  a  dream,  and  she  dreamed  she  saw  Peter 
lying  wounded  in  a  thicket,  and  she  knew  perfectly 
where  it  was  and  said  she  must  go  to  find  him. 
Simon  humored  her  and  gave  her  money  for  a  long 
voyage.  She  went  back  to  her  own  village  and  out 
upon  the  road  until  she  came  to  the  effigy  of  the 
god,  for  this  was  the  only  god  she  knew,  and  she 
prayed  to  him.  The  old  man  appeared  before  her 
and  told  her  to  go  to  her  home,  for  Peter  would 
return  to  her  before  she  died.  At  this  she  was  com- 
forted, and  went  home  to  her  husband  and  sent 
Simon  back  his  money,  because  she  was  afraid  to 
keep  so  large  a  sum  in  the  house. 

It  was  said  in  the  capital  that  the  land  of  the 
greatest  of  emperors  was  the  richest  of  all  countries, 
but  the  people  were  the  stupidest  and  had  no  notion 
of  its  wealth.  The  financiers  were  continually  send- 
ing concessionaires  and  adventurers,  but  they  came 
away  empty-handed.  Simon  had  now  paid  his  way 
into  the  royal  circle,  and  for  defraying  the  debt  on 
the  royal  stable  had  been  ennobled.  He  suggested 
to  the  King  that  he  should  send  an  embassy  to  in- 
vite the  greatest  of  emperors  and  his  daughter  ta 
pay  a  visit  to  the  capital  to  see  the  wonders  of  their 
civilization. 

The  embassy  was  sent,  the  invitation  accepted, 
and  the  Emperor  and  the  Princess  arrived  and  their 
photographs  were  in  all  the  illustrated  papers.  They 
did  not  like  this,  for  in  their  own  country  only  one 
portrait  of  the  Emperor  was  painted,  and  that  was 

151 


OLD    MOLE 

the  life  work  of  the  greatest  artist  of  the  time.  The 
Princess  was  candor  itself,  and  said  frankly  what 
she  liked  and  what  she  did  not  like.  She  liked  very 
little,  and  after  she  had  been  driven  through  the 
capital  she  sent  for  the  richest  man  in  the  country, 
and  Simon  was  brought  to  her.  He  bowed  before 
her  and  trembled  and  told  her  that  all  his  wealth 
was  at  her  service.  So  she  told  him  to  pull  down 
all  the  ugly  houses  and  the  dark  streets  and  to  make 
gardens  and  cottages  and  to  give  every  man  in  them 
a  piece  of  gold. 

"They  will  only  squander  it,"  said  Simon. 

"Let  them,"  replied  the  Princess  Elizabeth. 
"Surely  even  the  most  miserable  may  have  one  mo- 
ment of  pleasure." 

"In  your  country  are  there  no  poor?" 

"There  are  no  rich  men.  There  are  good  men 
and  bad  men,  and  the  good  are  rewarded,  and  hon- 
ored." 

As  she  ordered,  so  it  was  done,  and  the  poor 
blessed  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  but  the  financiers 
muttered  among  themselves,  and  they  arranged  that 
one  of  their  agents  should  go  to  the  Emperor's  coun- 
try, stir  up  sedition,  and  be  arrested.  Then  they 
announced  in  their  newspapers  international  com- 
plications, said  day  after  day  that  the  national  honor 
was  besmirched,  and  demanded  redress.  The  Em- 
peror and  the  Princess  Elizabeth  hurriedly  left  the 
capital  and  returned  to  their  own  country.  Simon 
had  declared  his  admiration  for  the  Princess  and 
she  had  snubbed  him.    His  newspapers  added  to  the 

152 


INTERLUDE 

outcry,  and  he  ordered  a  poet  to  write  a  national 
song,  which  became  very  popular: 

We  ain't  a  fighting  nation, 

But  when  we  do,  we  do. 
We've  got  the  ships,  we've  got  the  cash, 

We've  got  the  soldiers,  too. 

So  look  out  there  and  mind  your  eye, 
We're  out  to  do,  we're  out  to  die, 
For  God  and  King  and  country. 

But  in  the  Emperor's  country  all  the  songs  were 
in  praise  of  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  and  when  she 
heard  that  ships  of  war  were  on  the  seas  and  huge 
vessels  transporting  soldiers,  she  consulted  with  the 
Minister  and  gave  orders  for  all  weapons  to  be 
buried  and  for  all  houses  to  be  prepared  to  receive 
the  guests  and  the  great  hall  of  the  palace  to  be 
made  ready  for  a  banquet. 

Her  Minister  was  Peter,  and  she  delighted  in  his 
wisdom  and  never  wearied  of  listening  to  the  tale 
of  his  adventures,  how  in  his  quest  he  had  been 
cheated,  and  robbed,  and  beaten,  and  cast  into 
prison,  and  scourged,  and  bastinadoed,  and  incar- 
cerated for  a  lunatic,  and  mocked  and  despised, 
nearly  drowned  by  a  mountain  torrent,  all  but 
crushed  by  a  huge  boulder  that  came  crashing  down 
a  hillside  and  carried  away  the  tree  beneath  which 
he  was  sleeping;  and  how  all  these  afflictions  did  but 
intensify  his  vision  of  that  which  he  loved,  so  that 
the  pain  and  the  terror  of  them  fell  away  and  he 

153 


OLD    MOLE 

was  left  with  the  glorious  certainty  of  being  near 
his  goal.  He  did  not  tell  her  what  that  was  because 
it  was  very  sweet  to  serve  her,  and  he  knew  that  she 
was  proud  and  had  rejected  the  hands  of  the  great- 
est and  handsomest  princes  of  her  father's  depen- 
dencies. It  was  very  pleasant  for  him  to  see  her 
emotion  as  he  told  his  tale,  and  when  she  almost 
wept  on  the  final  adventure,  how,  as  he  neared  her 
father's  city,  he  was  set  upon  by  a  band  of  peas- 
ants, who  believed  him  to  be  a  blasphemer  and  a 
wizard  because  of  his  box,  and  left  for  dead,  and 
how  he  awoke  to  find  her  bending  over  him,  then  he 
could  scarcely  contain  himself,  and  he  would  hide 
his  face  and  hasten  from  her  presence. 

He  had  a  little  house  in  one  of  her  private  parks, 
and  whenever  she  was  in  any  difficulty  she  came  to 
consult  him,  for  his  sufferings  had  made  him  sensi- 
ble, and  his  devotion  to  a  single  idea  gave  him  a 
nobility  which  she  found  not  in  her  other  courtiers. 

It  was  he,  then,  who  advised  the  cordial  reception 
of  the  hostile  armies,  for  he  had  observed,  in  the 
numerous  assaults  of  which  he  had  been  the  victim, 
that  when  he  hit  back  he  only  incensed  his  adver- 
sary and  roused  him  to  a  madder  pitch  of  cruelty. 
Also  he  had  lived  among  soldiers  and  knew  them 
to  be  slaves  of  their  bellies  and  no  true  servants  of 
any  cause  or  idea.  Therefore,  he  gave  this  coun- 
sel, and  it  was  followed,  and  the  army  was  dis- 
banded, and  the  citizens  prepared  their  houses  and 
decorated  the  city  against  the  coming  of  the  army. 
When  they  arrived,  all  the  populace  turned  out  to 

154 


INTERLUDE 

see  them,  and  the  generals  and  captains  were  met 
by  the  chief  men,  the  poets,  and  the  philosophers, 
and  the  scholars,  and  made  welcome.  There  were 
feasting  and  fireworks,  and  the  harlots  devoted  them- 
selves to  the  service  of  the  country,  and  by  night  a 
more  drunken  army  was  never  seen.  Their  guns 
and  ammunition  were  thrown  into  the  harbor,  and 
next  day  they  were  allowed  to  choose  whether  they 
would  return  to  their  own  country  or  stay  and  be- 
come citizens  of  this.  Nine-tenths  of  the  soldiers 
chose  to  stay,  many  of  them  married  and  made 
honest  women  of  the  devoted  creatures  who  had  been 
their  pleasure,  and  thus  the  causes  of  virtue  and 
peace  were  served  at  once.  The  soldiers  and  their 
wives  were  scattered  up  and  down  the  country,  work 
was  found  for  them,  and  both  lost  the  rudeness 
and  brutality  induced  by  their  former  callings. 

The  other  tenth  returned  to  their  own  country. 
Simon  and  the  financiers  heard  their  galling  story 
and  told  the  people  that  a  glorious  victory  had  been 
won  and  the  nation's  flag,  after  horrible  carnage, 
planted  over  yet  another  outpost  of  the  Empire. 
There  was  immense  enthusiasm.  Shiploads  of 
Bibles  were  sent  out,  and  a  hundred  missionaries 
from  the  sixty-five  different  religious  denomina- 
tions. 

Peter's  advice  was  sought,  and  he  ordered  a  cel- 
lar to  be  prepared.  The  Bibles  were  stored  in  this, 
and  the  missionaries  were  set  to  translate  them  back 
into  the  original  languages.  They  had  got  no  fur- 
ther than  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Genesis  when 


OLD    MOLE 

they  declared  their  willingness  to  be  converted  to 
the  religion  of  the  country;  but  there  was  no  pro- 
fessed religion,  for,  when  the  Princess  had  asked 
Peter  what  her  father  could  best  do  to  serve  his 
subjects  and  make  his  name  blessed  among  them,  he 
had  replied: 

"Let  him  abolish  that  which  most  engenders  hy- 
pocrisy. Let  him  establish  the  right  of  every  man 
to  be  himself.  Let  there  be  good  men  and  bad  men 
— since  there  must  be  good  and  bad — but  no  hypo- 
crites. Let  him  withdraw  his  support  from  that 
religion  which  maintains  priests,  superstition  and 
prejudice,  and  it  will  topple  down.  Faith  is  an  act 
of  living,  not  a  creed." 

At  first  the  Emperor  was  afraid  that  if  the  State 
religion  toppled  he  would  come  crashing  down,  but 
he  could  deny  his  daughter  nothing,  and  he  withdrew 
his  support.  In  less  than  a  year  there  was  not  a 
sign  of  the  professed  religion,  and  no  one  noticed 
its  absence.  There  was  a  marked  improvement  in 
the  behavior  of  the  people  and  their  good  sense, 
which  made  it  possible  for  Peter's  advice  to  be  fol- 
lowed in  dealing  with  the  foreign  army.  There  was 
a  notable  decrease  in  crime,  and  litigation  became 
so  infrequent  that  half  the  Courts  of  Justice  were 
closed,  and  the  Attorneys  and  Advocates  retired 
into  the  country  or  adopted  the  profession  of  let- 
ters. With  the  money  released  by  the  disestablished 
religion  and  the  reduced  Courts  of  Justice  the  Em- 
peror founded  universities  and  schools  and  set  apart 
money  to  endow  maternity  and  medicine,   saying: 

i56 


INTERLUDE 

"We  have  all  money  enough  for  our  pleasure,  but 
it  is  when  the  shadow  of  a  natural  crisis  comes  over 
us  that  we  are  in  need." 

The  Princess  was  loud  in  praise  of  her  Minister, 
and  the  people  and  the  men  of  letters  declared  that 
the  Emperor  really  was  the  greatest  ruler  the  world 
had  ever  seen.  The  Emperor  swallowed  it  all  as  a 
good  monarch  should,  but  Peter  was  overcome  with 
tenderness  for  his  Princess,  and,  dreading  lest  he 
should  betray  his  secret,  he  asked  her  leave  to  de- 
part for  a  while,  and  betook  him  to  his  own  country 
and  his  village  to  see  his  mother. 

She  lay  upon  her  deathbed  and  was  very  feeble. 
Simon  had  sent  her  some  calf's-foot  jelly,  but  was 
too  deeply  engaged  to  come.  Peter  sat  by  her  bed- 
side and  told  her  about  his  Princess,  and  she  patted 
his  hand  and  laughed  merrily,  and  said: 

"You  always  were  a  bonny  liar,  laddie.  Kiss  me 
and  take  my  blessing." 

Peter  kissed  her  and  took  her  blessing,  and  she 
died. 

He  went  to  the  roadside  where  he  had  come  by 
his  box  and  his  vision,  but  the  old  man  was  not  there, 
the  trees  were  cut  down,  and  the  effigy  of  the  god 
had  rotted  away  and  only  the  stump  of  it  was  left. 
He  planted  an  acorn  in  the  place  to  mark  the  be- 
ginning of  his  joy  in  life,  but,  knowing  that  the  act 
of  breathing  is  prayer  enough,  he  decided  to  go 
away  and  think  no  more  about  his  good  fortune  or 
his  bad  fortune,  or  the  profit  he  had  drawn  from 
both.     He  sighed  over  the  thousands  of  miles  that 

157 


OLD   MOLE 

separated  him  from  his  Princess,  and  decided  each 
day  to  reduce  them  by  at  least  thirty. 

The  news  of  the  war  had  only  just  reached  that 
part  of  the  country,  and  he  heard  men  talking  of  the 
glorious  victory.  At  first  he  was  alarmed,  but  when 
he  heard  more  he  laughed  and  told  the  men  the 
truth.  They  took  and  ducked  him  in  the  horse  pond 
for  a  spy  and  a  traitor,  and  when  he  crawled  out 
they  thrashed  him  with  whips  until  they  had  cut 
his  clothes  in  ribbons  and  his  flesh  into  weals.  Then 
they  put  him  in  the  old  stocks  and  left  him  there  for 
a  day  and  a  night.  He  was  cold  and  hungry,  and 
his  bones  ached,  but  when  he  found  himself  near  to 
counting  his  miseries  and  wishing  himself  dead,  then 
he  took  out  his  box  and  gazed  at  the  image  of  the 
Princess  and  said  to  it: 

"Yet  will  I  live  to  serve  you.  My  life  is  nothing 
except  it  go  to  sustain  the  wonder  of  yours." 

So  he  bore  this  calamity,  as  he  had  borne  so  many 
others,  for  her  sake. 

He  had  no  other  clothes,  and  when  he  was  re- 
leased he  patched  and  mended  his  suit  and  made  his 
way,  working  and  singing  for  his  bread,  to  the  capi- 
tal. There  he  inquired  after  his  brother,  and  men 
looked  awed  as  they  pronounced  his  name,  and  they 
all  knew  his  house  and  the  names  of  his  racehorses, 
but  of  the  rest  they  could  tell  very  little.  Peter  went 
to  the  magnificent  house,  ragged  as  he  was,  and 
asked  to  see  his  brother.  Two  lackeys  and  a  butler 
opened  the  door,  and  they  lifted  their  noses  at  him. 
The   butler   said   his   lordship    had   brothers    and 

158 


INTERLUDE 

fathers  and  cousins  coming  to  see  him  all  day  long, 
but  Peter  persisted,  and  was  told  he  might  be 
his  lordship's  brother,  but  his  lordship  was  away 
on  his  lordship's  yacht  and  no  letters  were  for- 
warded. 

Having  no  other  interest  in  the  capital,  Peter  set 
out  on  his  return,  and  when  he  came  to  the  frontier 
of  the  fortunate  land  that  had  nursed  his  Princess 
he  was  greeted  with  tidings  that  made  his  heart  sink 
within  him.  A  handsome  stranger  told  him  that  the 
Emperor  had  enclosed  the  commons  and  great  tracts 
of  forest,  and  prospected  the  whole  country  for  coal 
and  oil  and  metals  and  precious  stones,  and  how  the 
poets  and  the  philosophers  and  the  scholars  were 
cast  down  from  their  high  places,  and,  most  la- 
mentable of  all,  how  the  Princess  was  imprisoned 
because  she  would  not  marry  the  new  Emperor  of 
Colombia,  who  had  arrived  in  his  yacht  with  untold 
treasures,  and  how  her  private  parks  were  taken  for 
menageries,  racecourses  and  football  grounds.  Peter 
buried  his  head  in  his  arms  and  wept. 

With  the  stranger  he  journeyed  toward  the  capi- 
tal. Over  great  tracts  of  the  country  there  hung 
black  clouds  of  smoke;  new  cities  meanly  built, 
hastily  and  without  design,  floundered  out  over  the 
hills  and  meadows;  pleasant  streams  were  fouled; 
sometimes  all  the  trees  and  the  grass  and  plants 
and  hedgerow  bushes  were  dead  for  miles;  and  in 
those  places  the  men  and  women  were  wan  and  list- 
less and  their  poverty  was  terrible  to  see:  there 
were  tall  chimneys  even  in  the  most  lovely  valleys, 

J59 


OLD    MOLE 

and  in  them  were  working  pregnant  women  and 
little  children,  and  Peter  asked  the  stranger  whose 
need  was  satisfied  by  their  work. 

"There  are  millions  of  men  upon  the  earth,"  an- 
swered the  stranger,  "and  what  you  see  is  indus- 
trial development.  It  drives  men  to  a  frenzy  so  that 
they  know  not  what  they  do." 

And  when  they  came  to  the  capital  they  found 
the  frenzy  at  its  height.  It  was  no  longer  the 
peaceful  and  lovely  city  of  Peter's  happiness;  gone 
were  the  gardens  and  groves  of  myrtle  and  sweet- 
scented  laurel;  gone  the  beautiful  houses  and  the 
noble  streets;  tall  buildings  of  a  bastard  architec- 
ture, of  no  character  or  tradition,  towered  and  made 
darkness;  huge  hotels  invited  to  luxury  and  lewd- 
ness; the  Emperor's  ancient  palace  was  gone,  and 
its  successor  was  like  another  hotel,  and  in  the  ave- 
nue, where  formerly  the  most  gracious  and  distin- 
guished of  the  citizens  used  to  make  parade  amid 
the  admiration  and  applause  of  their  humble  fel- 
lows, was  now  a  throng  of  foreigners  and  vulgari- 
ans, Jews,  Levantines,  Americans,  all  ostentation 
and  display.  .  .  .  Beneath  the  splendor  and  glitter 
linked  a  squalor  and  a  sordid  misery  that  called 
aloud,  and  called  in  vain,  for  pity.  And  in  the  out- 
skirts were  again  the  chimneys  and  the  factories  with 
the  machines  thudding  night  and  day,  and  round 
them  filth  and  poverty  and  disease.  .  .  .  The 
priests  were  back  in  their  place  to  give  consolation 
to  the  poor,  who  were  beyond  consolation,  and  the 
Courts  of  Justice  were  housed  in  the  largest  building 

1 60 


INTERLUDE 

in  the  world.     At  every  street  corner  newspapers 
were  sold. 

In  a  new  thoroughfare  driven  boldly  through  the 
most  ancient  part  of  the  city  and  flanked  absurdly 
with  common  terraces  of  houses,  they  found  a  thin 
crowd  standing  in  expectation.  The  two  Emperors 
were  to  go  by  on  their  way  to  open  the  new  Tech- 
nical College  and  Public  Library.  They  passed 
swiftly  in  an  open  carriage,  and  a  faint  little  cheer 
went  up,  so  different  from  the  vast  roar  that  used 
to  greet  the  Emperor  and  the  Princess  in  all  their 
public  appearances.  The  Emperor  looked  haggard 
and  nervous,  as  though  he  were  consumed  with  a 
fever,  but  the  Emperor  of  Colombia  was  fat  as  a 
successful  spider.  Peter  gasped  when  he  saw  him, 
for  he  was  Simon.  But  he  said  nothing,  and  they 
passed  on. 

Saddest  sight  of  all  were  the  prosperous,  well- 
fed  women  gazing  with  dead  eyes  into  the  shop  win- 
dows wherein  were  displayed  fashionable  garments 
and  trinkets,  overwhelming  in  their  quantity. 

Preferable  to  that  was  the  avenue  with  the  Jews 
and  the  Levantines  and  the  Americans.  Thither 
with  the  stranger  Peter  returned,  and  he  met  a  poet, 
lean  and  disconsolate,  who  had  been  his  intimate 
friend.  They  three  talked  together,  and  the  poet 
asked  if  there  were  no  power  to  cool  the  heat  and 
reduce  the  frenzy  in  the  blood  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  country.    Said  the  stranger : 

"There  is  a  power  which  makes  the  earth  a 
heaven;  a  power  without  which  the  life  of  men  is 

161 


OLD    MOLE 

no  more  than  the  life  of  tadpoles  squirming  in  a 
stagnant  pond." 

Peter  said  the  power  must  be  Love:  the  poet 
declared  it  was  Imagination. 

"Love  in  itself,"  said  the  stranger,  uis  a  human, 
comfortable  thing;  with  the  light  of  imagination, 
love  is  the  living  word  of  God  in  the  heart  of  man." 

And  behold  the  stranger  stood  before  them,  an 
angel  or  genius  clad  all  in  white  with  wings  of  silver 
that  rose  above  him  and  beat  to  flight,  and  away  he 
soared  to  the  sun.  And  the  poet  raised  his  head, 
and  in  a  loud  voice  declaimed  musical  words,  and 
Peter  sobbed  in  his  joy,  but  the  Jews  and  the  Levan- 
tines and  the  Americans  had  seen  nothing,  and  wear- 
ily they  drove  and  walked  along  the  avenue,  scan- 
ning each  other  in  sly  envy. 

Hard  and  bitter  was  the  lot  of  the  people,  and 
their  loyalty  to  the  Emperor  was  shaken.  There 
were  none  now  to  bless  his  name,  none  to  call  him 
the  greatest  of  rulers,  and  only  the  priests  praised 
him  for  his  wisdom  in  yielding  to  the  tide  of  prog- 
ress. There  was  little  happiness  anywhere :  the  old 
superstitions  and  prejudices  were  restored  to  cur- 
rency, the  tyranny  of  public  opinion  was  enthroned 
again,  and  books  were  written  and  plays  performed 
to  fortify  its  authority. 

Every  day  Simon  sent  the  Princess  richer  pres- 
ents and  messengers  to  crave  the  boon  of  an  audi- 
ence; but  the  Princess  made  no  reply  and  would 
never  leave  her  apartments.  Every  day  she  used 
to  stand  at  her  window  and  gaze  in  the  direction 

l6z 


INTERLUDE 

where  Peter's  country  lay  and  pray  for  his  return. 
One  day  her  ape  was  with  her,  and  he  chattered 
excitedly  and  hurled  himself  into  the  sycamore  tree 
that  grew  beneath  her  window.  He  returned  in  a 
moment  with  an  empty  box.  She  looked  into  it  and 
saw  the  image  of  Peter,  as  he  was,  ragged  and 
unhappy,  but  with  adoration  in  his  eyes.  Then  she 
could  no  longer  dissemble,  but,  with  happy  tears, 
she  confessed  to  herself  that  she  loved  him.  .  .  . 
Next  day  she  walked  in  her  garden,  and  on  the 
other  side  of  the  little  stream  marking  its  boundary 
she  saw  Peter.  They  told  their  love,  and  he  swore 
to  deliver  her  and  not  to  see  her  again  until  he  had 
done  so.  With  a  brave  heart  she  wished  him  God- 
speed and  threw  him  back  his  box,  in  which  she 
had  concealed  three  kisses  and  a  lock  of  her  hair. 
For  forty  days  and  forty  nights  did  Peter  remain 
in  solitude,  wrestling  with  himself  and  cogitating 
how  he  might  best  accomplish  the  salvation  of  his 
adored  Princess  and  the  country  that  was  dearer  to 
her  even  than  himself.  Step  by  step  he  followed 
Simon's  career  from  the  time  when  he  had  chosen 
the  box  with  the  piece  of  gold  to  the  golden  ruin 
he  had  brought  upon  thousands  of  men.  Then  he 
resolved  to  send  his  own  box  to  his  brother;  nay, 
himself  to  take  it.  He  procured  gorgeous  apparel, 
and  immense  chests,  and  camels  and  horses  and  ele- 
phants, disguised  a  hundred  and  fifty  of  his  friends 
in  Eastern  apparel,  and  in  this  array  presented  him- 
self at  the  Summer  Palace,  where  his  brother  was 
lodged.     The  doors  were  opened  to  him,  and  he 

163 


OLD    MOLE 

was  passed  on  from  lackey  to  lackey  until  he  found 
himself  in  his  brother's  presence.  Simon  greeted 
him  cordially  and  asked  for  his  news,  and  how  he 
had  fared. 

"I  have  all  my  desires,"  said  Peter.  "I  have  ful- 
filled my  destiny,  and  I  am  come  to  give  you  my 
box.    It  has  served  me  well." 

Greedily  Simon  snatched  the  box  and  opened  it 
to  see  what  treasure  it  might  contain.  He  saw  no 
image  of  beauty  therein,  but  only  himself,  and  the 
vision  of  his  own  soul  crushed  by  the  weight  of  his 
possessions,  and  the  pride  died  in  him  and  all  the 
savage  lusts  to  gratify  which  he  had  plotted  and 
schemed  and  laid  waste,  and  he  groaned: 

"All  my  power  is  but  vanity  and  my  hopes  are  in 
the  dust.  I  am  become  a  monster  and  unworthy  of 
the  Princess  Elizabeth." 

His  words  rang  through  the  Palace,  and  his  serv- 
ants and  those  who  had  called  themselves  his  friends 
fell  upon  his  possessions  and  divided  them  and  fled 
from  the  country.  So  deserted,  he  embraced  Peter 
and  vowed  that  his  brother's  love  was  now  a  greater 
treasure  to  him  than  all  he  had  sought  in  his  folly. 
They  took  counsel  together  and  decided  that  they 
had  best  persuade  the  greatest  of  emperors  to  grant 
his  people  a  Parliament  so  as  to  avert  the  imminent 
revolution.  They  did  that,  but  it  was  too  late. 
Peter's  procession  through  the  streets  to  the  Sum- 
mer Palace  had  alarmed  the  people  with  the  dread 
of  another  Imperial  visitor  as  injurious  as  the  last, 
and  they  had  made  barricades  in  the  streets,  and 

164 


INTERLUDE 

sacked  the  great  hotels,  and  dragged  the  Emperor 
and  all  his  counsellors  and  courtiers  into  the  stews 
and  there  slaughtered  them.  The  Princess  Eliza- 
beth was  released  and  loyally  acclaimed,  and  it  was 
only  on  her  intercession  that  Peter  and  Simon  were 
spared.  She  granted  the  people  a  Parliament,  and 
the  Courts  of  Justice  were  taken  for  its  House,  and 
she  opened  and  prorogued  it  in  the  regal  manner. 

After  a  year  of  mourning,  during  which  the  wisest 
of  laws  were  framed  for  the  control  of  the  mines 
and  the  factories  and  all  the  sources  of  wealth,  and 
land  and  water  were  made  all  men's  and  no  man's 
property,  and  the  children  were  trained  to  believe 
in  the  revealed  religion  of  love  as  the  living  word 
of  God  in  the  heart  of  man,  then  the  Princess  an- 
nounced her  marriage  with  her  Minister  and  ad- 
viser, Peter,  the  son  of  a  poor  man,  and  they  lived 
happily  with  their  people,  and  all  men  loved  and 
praised  Peter,  and  Peter  praised  and  worshiped  the 
Princess  Elizabeth.  They  lived  to  a  ripe  old  age, 
gathering  blessings  as  they  went,  and  they  had  six- 
teen children. 

But  Simon  returned  to  his  own  country  and  his 
village,  taking  with  him  the  two  boxes.  Out  of  the 
one  he  never  took  another  piece  of  gold,  and  into 
the  other  he  never  looked  until  he  was  at  peace 
with  himself  and  knew  that  he  could  gaze  upon  his 
soul  undismayed.  When  he  looked  into  it  he  saw 
Peter  and  the  Princess  and  their  children,  for  all  his 
love  was  with  them.  Then  he  went  out  upon  the 
road,  and  beneath  an  enormous  oak  tree  he  found 

165 


OLD   MOLE 

the  lean,  brown  old  man  with  his  great  book  on  his 
knees,  reading  aloud.  He  laid  the  boxes  at  his  feet 
and  bowed  to  him  and  said: 

"It  is  well/1 

The  old  man  bowed,  and,  turning  a  page  in  his 
book,  he  read: 

"It  is  well  with  the  world.  Man  frets  his  peace 
in  his  little  hour  on  this  earth,  whereof  he  is  and 
whereto  he  returns;  but  it  is  well  with  the  world." 

The  curtain  fell.  The  little  theater  disappeared, 
and  all  that  he  had  seen  and  heard  in  it  buzzed  in 
Old  Mole's  head,  and  the  colors  whirled  and  a 
flood  of  emotion  surged  through  his  body,  and  the 
spell  of  it  all  was  upon  him.  He  shifted  uneasily 
upon  the  sack  on  which  he  was  seated,  and  there 
came  a  rent  in  it.  Inside  it  was  a  corpse,  and,  when 
he  peered  at  it  in  horror,  he  knew  that  it  was  him- 
self. 

The  enchantment  broke,  and,  shivering  and  very 
cold,  he  fell  back  into  the  world  of  familiar  things, 
the  room  in  the  lodging  house,  with  the  fire  out, 
and  above  his  head,  in- the  first  floor  front,  lay  Ma- 
tilda, sleeping.  He  went  up  to  her,  and  she  lay 
with  her  hair  back  over  her  pillow  and  her  hand 
under  her  cheek,  and  he  said: 

"I  will  live  to  serve  you.  For  my  life  is  nothing 
except  it  go  to  sustain  the  wonder  of  yours." 

Old  Mole  was  much  astonished  at  this  effort  of 
his  imagination,  and  later  on  wrote  and  rewrote  it 

166 


MARRIAGE 

many  times,  but  what  he  wrote  was  no  more  than 
the  pale  echo  of  what  he  had  heard,  the  faded  copy 
of  what  he  had  seen.  When  he  came  to  analyze  and 
diagnose  his  condition  he  concluded  that  the  vivid 
impressions  produced  on  his  unexercised  receptive 
mind  had  induced  a  kind  of  self-hypnotism  in  which 
he  had  been  delivered  up  to  the  power  of  dreams 
subject  peculiarly  to  the  direction  of  his  logical  fac- 
ulty. He  could  not  remember  having  eaten  any- 
thing that  would  account  for  it. 


IV 

TOYS 

Worte!     Wortel     Keine  Thaten! 
Niemals  Fleisch,  geliebte  Puppe, 
Immer  Geist  und  keinen  Braten, 
Keine  K  no  del  in  der  Suppe. 

ROMANCERO 


IV 

TOYS 

WHEN  the  pantomime  came  to  an  end  (as 
it  did  before  a  packed  house,  that  cheered 
and  cheered  again  and  insisted  on  speeches 
from  the  comedians  and  the  principal  boy  and  the 
principal  girl,  and  went  on  cheering  regardless  of 
last  trains  and  trams  and  closing  time)  Matilda  was 
told  that,  if  she  liked  and  if  she  had  nothing  better 
to  do,  she  could  return  again  next  year.  She  de- 
clared her  pleasure  at  the  prospect,  but  inwardly 
determined  to  have  something  a  great  deal  better 
to  do.  She  had  drawn  blood  from  the  public  and 
was  thirsting  for  more  of  it.  Her  condition  was 
one  with  which  Old  Mole  was  destined  to  become 
familiar,  but  now  he  was  distressed  by  her  excite- 
ment, insisted  that  she  was  tired  (she  looked  it), 
and  decided  on  a  holiday.  She  would  only  consent 
on  condition  that  he  allowed  her  to  take  singing 
lessons  and  would  pay  for  them.  Still  harping  on 
economy — for  she  could  not  get  the  extent  and 
fertility  of  his  means  into  her  head — she  pitched  on 
Blackpool  because  she  had  a  sort  of  cousin  there 
who  kept  lodgings  and  would  board  them  cheap. 
He  tried  to  argue  with  her,  and  suggested  London 

171 


OLD   MOLE 

or  Paris.  But  London  had  become  to  her  the 
heaven  to  which  all  good  "professionals"  go,  and 
Paris  was  very  little  this  side  of  Hell  for  wicked- 
ness, and  her  three  months  in  the  theater  had  had 
the  curious  result  of  making  her  set  great  store  by 
her  estate  as  a  married  woman.  To  Blackpool  they 
went  and  were  withered  by  the  March  winds  and 
half  starved  by  Matilda's  cousin,  who  despised  them 
when  she  learned  that  they  were  play  actors.  They 
were  miserable,  and  for  misery  no  worse  setting 
could  be  found  than  an  empty  pleasure  city.  They 
frequented  the  theater,  and  very  quickly  Matilda 
made  friends  with  its  permanent  officials  and  ar- 
ranged for  her  singing  lessons  with  the  conductor  of 
the  orchestra,  who  was  also  organist  of  a  church 
and  eked  out  a  meager  living  with  instruction  on 
the  violin,  'cello,  piano,  organ,  flute,  trombone,  tym- 
pani,  voice  production  and  singing — (all  this  was 
set  forth  on  his  card,  which  he  left  on  Old  Mole 
by  way  of  assuring  himself  that  all  was  as  it  should 
be  and  he  would  be  paid  for  his  trouble).  Matilda 
had  four  lessons  a  week,  and  she  practiced  most 
industriously.  "It  was  not,"  said  her  instructor,  "as 
though  she  were  training  for  op'ra,  but  just  to  get 
the  voice  clear  and  refine  it.  .  .  ."  He  was  very 
genteel,  was  Mr.  Edwin  Watts,  and  he  did  more 
for  her  pronunciation  in  a  week  than  Old  Mole  had 
been  able  to  accomplish  in  a  year  and  more.  His 
gentility  discovered  the  gentleman  in  his  pupil's 
husband,  and  he  invited  them  to  his  house,  and  gave 
them  tickets  for  concerts  and  the  Tower  and  a  series 

172 


TOYS 

of  organ  recitals  he  was  giving  in  his  church.  He 
was  a  real  musician,  but  he  was  alone  in  his  music, 
for  he  had  an  invalid  wife  who  looked  down  on  his 
profession  and  would  admit  none  of  his  friends  to 
the  house,  which  she  filled  with  suites  of  furniture, 
china  knickknacks,  lace  curtains  and  pink  ribbons. 
The  little  man  lived  in  perpetual  distrust  of  him- 
self, admired  his  wife  because  he  loved  her,  and 
submitted  to  her  taste,  regarding  his  own  as  a  sort 
of  unregenerate  longing.  Neither  Old  Mole  nor 
Matilda  were  musical,  but,  when  his  wife  was  out 
to  tea  with  the  wife  of  the  bank  manager  or  the 
chemist,  Watts  would  invite  them  to  his  parlor  and 
play  the  piano — Bach,  Beethoven,  Chopin — until 
they  could  take  in  no  more  and  his  music  was  just 
a  noise  to  them.  But  there  was  no  exhausting  his 
capacity  or  his  energy,  and  when  they  were  thor- 
oughly worn  out  he  used  to  play  "little  things  of  his 
own."  He  was  very  religious  and  full  of  cranks,  a 
great  reader  of  the  advertisements  in  the  news- 
papers, and  there  was  no  patent  medicine,  hair  re- 
storer, magnetic  belt,  uric  acid  antidote  that  he  had 
not  tried.  He  was  proud  of  it,  and  used  to  say: 
"I've  tried  'em  all  except  the  bust  preservers." 
It  was  precisely  here  that  he  and  Old  Mole  found 
common  ground.  With  his  new  mental  activity  Old 
Mole  had  become  increasingly  sensitive  to  any  slug- 
gishness in  his  internal  organs  and  began  to  resent 
his  tendency  to  fleshiness.  He  and  Mr.  Watts  had 
immense  discussions,  and  the  musician  produced 
remedies  for  every  ailment  and  symptom. 

173 


OLD   MOLE 

Matilda  said  they  were  disgusting,  but  Old  Mole 
stuck  to  it,  smoked  less,  ate  less,  took  long  walks  in 
the  morning,  and  attained  a  ruddiness  of  complex- 
ion, a  geniality  of  manner,  a  sense  of  wellbeing  that 
helped  him,  with  surprising  suddenness,  to  begin  to 
enjoy  his  life,  to  delight  in  its  little  pleasures,  and 
to  laugh  at  its  small  mischances  and  irritations. 
With  a  chuckling  glee  he  would  watch  Matilda  in 
her  goings  out  and  her  comings  in,  and  he  preferred 
even  her  assiduous  practicing  to  her  absence.  He 
was  amazed  at  the  swiftness  with  which,  on  the  back- 
ward movement  of  time,  his  past  life  was  borne  away 
from  him,  with  his  anxieties,  his  unrest,  his  bewil- 
derment, his  repugnance  in  the  face  of  new  things 
and  new  people.  He  found  that  he  was  no  longer 
shy  with  other  men,  nor  did  he  force  them  to  shy- 
ness. He  lost  much  of  his  desire  to  criticize  and 
came  by  a  warm  tolerance,  which  saved  him  from 
being  conscious  of  too  many  things  at  once  and  left 
him  free  to  exist  or  to  live,  as  the  case  might  be. 
He  felt  ready  for  anything. 

When,  therefore,  Matilda  announced  that  Mr. 
Watts  had  procured  her  an  engagement  with  a  No. 
2  Northern  Musical  Comedy  Company,  touring, 
uThe  Cinema  Girl"  and  "The  Gay  Princess,"  he 
packed  up  his  traps,  told  himself  that  he  would  see 
more  of  this  astonishing  England,  and  went  with 
her.  She  had  two  small  parts  and  was  successful  in 
them.  And  now,  when  she  was  in  the  theater,  he 
no  longer  skulked  in  their  lodgings  nor  divided  her 
existence  into  two  portions — his  and  the  theater's, 

174 


TOYS 

but  went  among  the  company,  joined  in  their  fare 
and  jokes  and  calamities,  played  golf  with  the  prin- 
cipal comedian  and  the  manager,  and  saw  things 
with  their  eyes.  This  was  easy,  because  they  saw 
very  little.  They  liked  and  respected  him,  and  soon 
discovered  that  he  had  money.  Matilda's  lot  was 
made  comfortable  and  her  parts  were  enlarged. 
Neither  she  nor  her  husband  attributed  this  to  any- 
thing but  her  talent,  and  it  made  them  very  happy. 
Her  name  was  on  the  program,  and  they  cut  out  all 
the  flattering  references  to  her  in  the  newspapers 
and  pasted  them  into  a  book,  and  it  were  hard  to 
tell  which  read  them  the  oftener,  he  or  she.  He 
felt  ready  for  everything,  expanded  like  a  well- 
tended  plant;  but  with  his  unrest  had  gone  much  of 
his  sympathy  and  the  tug  and  tear  of  his  heart  on 
the  sight  of  misery.  He  watched  men  now  as  they 
might  be  dolls,  pranked  up  and  tottering,  flopping 
through  their  daily  employments,  staggeringly  ges- 
ticulating through  anger  and  love,  herding  together 
for  pleasure  and  gain,  and  when  both  were  won  (or 
avoided),  lurching  into  their  own  separate  little 
houses.  In  this  mood  it  pleased  him  to  be  with  the 
dolls  of  the  theater,  because  they  were  gayer  than 
the  rest,  farded,  painted,  peacocking  through  their 
days.  He  caught  something  of  their  swagger,  and, 
looking  at  the  world  through  their  eyes,  saw  it  as 
separate  from  himself,  full  of  dull  puppets,  bound 
to  one  place,  caught  in  a  mesh  of  streets,  while  from 
week  to  week  he  moved  on.  The  sense  of  liberty, 
of  having  two  legs  where  other  men  were  shackled, 

175 


OLD    MOLE 

was  potent  enough  to  carry  him  through  the  travel- 
ing on  Sundays,  often  all  day  long,  with  dreary 
waits  at  empty,  shuttered  stations,  and  blinded  him 
to  the  small  miseries,  the  mean  scandals,  the  jeal- 
ousies, rivalries  and  wounded  sensibilities  which  oc- 
cupied the  rest  of  the  company.  .  .  .  There  was 
one  woman — she  was  perhaps  forty-five — who  sat 
opposite  to  him  on  three  consecutive  Sundays.  She 
played,  in  both  pieces,  the  inevitable  dowager  to 
chaperone  the  heroine;  she  was  always  knitting,  and, 
with  brows  furrowed,  she  stared  fixedly  in  front  of 
her;  her  lips  were  always  moving,  and  every  now 
and  then  she  would  nod  her  head  vigorously,  or  she 
would  stop  and  stare  desperately,  and  put  her  hands 
to  her  lips  and  her  heart  would  leap  to  her  mouth. 
At  first  Old  Mole  thought  she  was  counting  the 
stitches;  but  once,  in  the  train,  she  laid  aside  her 
knitting  and  produced  a  roll  of  cloth  and  cut  out  a 
pair  of  trousers.  Her  lips  went  more  furiously  than 
ever,  and  suddenly  her  eyes  stared  and  she  held  out 
her  hand  with  the  scissors  as  though  to  ward  off 
some  danger.  Old  Mole  leaned  across  and  spoke 
to  her,  but  she  was  so  taken  up  with  her  own 
thoughts  that  she  replied: 

"Yes,  it's  better  weather,  isn't  it?"  jerked  out  a 
watery  smile  and  withdrew  into  herself.  When  Old 
Mole  asked  Matilda  why  the  woman  counted  her 
stitches  even  when  she  was  not  knitting,  and  why, 
apparently,  she  dropped  so  many  stitches  when  she 
was,  Matilda  told  him  that  the  woman  had  lost  her 
voice   and  her  figure  and  could  make  very  little 

176 


TOYS 

money,  and  had  a  husband  who  was  a  comedian,  the 
funniest  fellow  in  the  world  off  the  stage,  but  when 
he  was  "on"  all  his  humor  leaked  away,  and  though 
he  worked  very  hard  no  one  laughed  at  him,  and 
he,  too,  made  very  little  money.  They  had  six  chil- 
dren, and  all  the  time  in  the  train  the  woman  was 
making  calculations.  She  often  borrowed  money, 
but  that  only  added  to  her  perplexity,  because  she 
could  not  bear  not  to  pay  it  back. 

This  story  almost  moved  Old  Mole,  but  his  mood 
was  too  strong  for  him,  and  the  woman  only  came 
forward  to  the  foreground  of  the  puppet  show,  a 
sort  of  link  between  the  free  players,  the  colored, 
brilliant  dolls,  and  the  drab  mannikins  who  lived 
imprisoned  in  the  background. 

His  was  a  very  pleasant  mood  to  drift  in  and 
lounge  and  taste  the  soothing  savor  of  irony,  which 
dulls  sharp  edges  and  tempers  the  emphasis  of  op- 
timism or  pessimism.  It  seems  to  deliver  the  soul 
from  its  desire  for  relief  and  sops  its  hunger  with 
a  comfortable  pity.  But  it  is  a  lie.  Old  Mole  knew 
it  not  for  what  it  was  and  hugged  it  to  himself,  and 
called  it  wisdom,  and  he  began  to  write  a  satire  on 
education  as  he  had  known  it  in  Thrigsby.  He  rev- 
eled in  the  physical  labor  of  writing,  in  the  company 
of  his  ideas  as  they  took  shape  in  the  furnace  of 
concentration,  and  what  he  had  intended  to  be  a 
short  pamphlet  grew  into  an  elaborate  account  of 
his  twenty-five  years  of  respectable  and  respected 
service,  showing  the  slow  submergence  of  the  human 
being  into  the  machine  evolved  for  the  creation  of 

177 


OLD    MOLE 

other  machines.  .  .  .  He  was  weeks  and  months 
over  it.  The  tour  did  not  come  to  an  end  as  had 
been  anticipated,  but  was  continued  through  the 
holiday  months  at  the  seaside  resorts.  They  re- 
turned to  Blackpool  in  August,  and  then  he  finished 
his  work  and  read  it  to  Edwin  Watts.  The  musi- 
cian had  an  enormous  reverence  for  the  printed 
word,  and  had  never  met  an  author  before.  His 
emotionalism  warmed  up  and  colored  the  dryness 
and  bitterness  of  Old  Mole's  tale,  and  he  saw  in  it 
only  a  picture  of  suppression  and  starved  imagina- 
tion like  his  own.  He  applauded,  and  Old  Mole  was 
proud  of  his  firstborn  and  determined  to  publish  it. 
In  his  early  days  he  had  revised  and  prepared  a 
book  of  Examination  Papers  in  Latin  accidence  for 
a  series,  and  to  the  publisher  he  sent  his  "Syntax 
and  Sympathy."  It  had  really  moved  Edwin  Watts, 
and  he  composed  in  its  honor  a  sonata  in  B  flat, 
which  he  dedicated  "To  the  mute,  inglorious  Mil- 
tons  of  Lancashire. "  It  was  played  on  the  pier  by 
a  municipal  band,  but  did  not  immediately  produce 
any  ebullition  of  genius. 

When  Old  Mole  told  Matilda  that  he  had  written 
a  book  she  asked : 

"Is  it  a  story?" 

"A  sort  of  story." 

"Has  it  a  happy  ending?  I  can't  see  why  people 
write  stories  that  make  you  miserable." 

"It's  a  wonderful  book,"  said  Edwin  Watts. 

And  Old  Mole  said : 

"I  flatter  myself  there  are  worse  books  written." 

i78 


TOYS 

When  Watts  had  gone  Matilda  said: 
"If  it's  not  a  nice  book  I  couldn't  bear  it." 
"What  do  you  mean — you  couldn't  bear  it?" 
"If  it's  like  that  Lucretius  you're  so  fond  of  I'd 
be  ashamed." 

In  the  intoxication  that  still  endured  from  the 
fumes  of  writing  he  had  been  thinking  that  the  book 
was  not  incomparable  with  "De  Rerum  Natura," 
something  between  that  and  the  Satires  of  Juvenal. 

In  a  few  weeks  his  manuscript  returned  with  a 
polite  letter  from  the  publisher  declining  it,  desiring 
to  see  more  of  Mr.  Beenham's  work,  and  enclosing 
his  reader's  report.    It  was  short: 

"  'Syntax  and  Sympathy'  is  satire  without  passion 
or  any  basis  of  love  for  humanity.  There  is  nothing 
more  damnable.  The  book  is  clever  enough.  It 
would  be  beastly  in  French — there  is  a  plentiful  crop 
of  them  in  Paris;  in  England,  thank  God,  with  our 
public's  loathing  of  cleverness,  it  is  impossible." 

The  author  burned  letter  and  report,  and  at  night, 
when  Matilda  was  at  the  theater,  buried  the  manu- 
script in  the  sands. 

If  there  be  any  man  who,  awaking  from  a  moral 
crisis,  finds  himself  withered  by  the  fever  of  it  and 
racked  with  doubt  as  to  his  power  to  go  boldly  and 
warmly  among  his  fellowmen  without  being  battered 
and  bewildered  into  pride  or  priggishness  or  cold 
egoism  or  thin-blooded  humanitarianism,  let  him  go 
to  Blackpool  in  holiday  time.     There  he  will  find 

179 


OLD   MOLE 

hundreds  of  thousands  of  men,  women  and  children; 
he  will  hear  them,  see  them,  smell  them,  be  jostled 
and  chaffed  by  them.  He  will  find  them  in  and  on 
the  water,  on  the  sands,  in  the  streets,  in  the  many 
public  places,  shows  and  booths,  in  the  vast  ball- 
rooms, straggling  and  stravading,  smoking,  drink- 
ing, laughing,  guffawing,  cracking  coarse  jokes,  sing- 
ing bawdy  and  patriotic  songs  with  equal  gusto,  mak- 
ing music  with  mouth-organs,  concertinas,  cornets; 
young  men  and  maidens  kissing  and  squeezing  un- 
ashamed, and  at  night  stealing  out  to  the  lonely 
sands;  old  men  and  women  gurgling  over  beer  and 
tobacco,  yarning  over  the  troubles  that  came  of  just 
such  lovemaking  in  their  young  days;  and  all  hot 
and  perspiring;  wearing  out  their  bodies,  for  once 
in  a  way,  in  pleasure,  gross  pleasure  with  no  savor 
to  it  nor  lasting  quality,  but  coarse  as  the  food  they 
eat,  as  the  beds  they  lie  on,  as  the  clothes  they  wear; 
forgetting  that  their  bodies  are,  day  in,  day  out,  bent 
in  labor,  forgetting  the  pinch  and  penury  of  their 
lives  at  home,  forgetting  that  their  bodies  have  any 
other  than  their  brutish  functions  of  eating,  drink- 
ing, sleeping,  excretion  and  fornication.  .  .  .  Old 
Mole  watched  it  all,  and,  true  to  his  ironical  mood, 
he  saw  the  mass  in  little,  swarming  like  ants;  in  the 
early  morning  of  the  great  day  these  creatures  were 
belched  forth  from  the  black  internal  regions  of  the 
country,  out  upon  the  seashore;  there  they  sprawled 
and  struggled  and  made  a  great  clatter  and  din, 
until  at  the  end  of  the  day  they  were  sucked  back 
again.     Intellectually  it  interested  him.     It  was  a 

180 


TOYS 

pageant  of  energy  unharnessed;  but  it  was  all  loose, 
unshaped,  overdone,  repeating  itself  again  and  again, 
so  that  at  last  it  destroyed  any  feeling  he  might  have 
had  for  it.  He  saw  it  through  to  the  end,  to  the  last 
excursion  train  going  off,  crammed  in  every  com- 
partment, with  tired  voices  singing,  often  quite  beau- 
tifully, in  harmony. 

Matilda  had  refused  to  go  out  with  him.  She 
came  home  very  late  from  the  theater,  and  said  she 
had  been  helping  the  knitting  woman  cut  out  some 
clothes.  He  asked  her  if  she  had  ever  seen  the 
crowds  in  the  pleasure  city.  She  looked  away  from 
him,  and  with  a  sudden,  almost  imperceptible,  ges- 
ture of  pain  replied: 

"Once." 

He  knew  when  that  was,  and  with  a  tearing 
agony  the  old  jealousy  rushed  in  upon  him  and  with 
a  brutality  that  horrified  him,  that  was  whipped  out 
of  him,  to  the  ruin  of  his  self-control,  he  ground 
out: 

"Yes.     I  know  when  that  was." 

Her  hand  went  tugging  up  to  her  breast  and  she 
said  with  passionate  resentment: 

uYou  ought  never  to  say  a  thing  like  that  to  me." 

His  blood  boiled  into  a  fury  and  he  turned  on 
her,  but  she  was  gone.  He  wrestled  with  himself, 
toiled  and  labored  to  regain  his  will,  the  mastery  of 
his  thoughts  and  his  feelings.  The  jealousy  died 
away,  but  no  other  emotion  came  to  take  its  place. 
He  regained  his  will,  saw  clearly  again,  but  was 
more  possessed  by  his  irony  than  before.     He  was 

181 


OLD   MOLE 

no  longer  its  master,  no  longer  drifting  comfortably, 
but  its  slave,  whirled  hither  and  thither  at  its  caprice 
— and  it  was  like  a  hot  gusty  wind  blowing  in  him 
before  a  storm.  All  the  color  of  the  world  was 
heavy  and  metallic,  but  it  was  painted  color,  a 
painted  world.  He  was  detached  from  himself, 
from  Matilda,  and  he  and  she  passed  into  the  puppet 
show  in  the  miserable  liberty  of  the  gaily  painted 
dolls:  free  only  in  being  out  of  the  crowd,  sharing 
none  of  the  crowd's  energy,  having  no  part  in  any 
solidarity. 

He  made  himself  a  bed  on  the  hard  horsehair 
sofa  in  their  room  and  lay  hour  by  hour  staring  at 
the  window  panes,  listening  to  the  distant  thud  and 
thunder  of  the  sea,  watching  for  the  light  to  come 
to  make  plain  the  window  and  show  up  the  colors 
of  the  painted  world. 

In  the  morning  they  avoided  each  other,  and  she 
spent  the  day  with  the  knitting  woman,  he  with  Ed- 
win Watts,  and,  when,  at  night,  she  returned  from 
the  theater,  he  was  asleep.  It  was  the  first  time 
they  had  strangled  a  day,  and  it  lay  cold  and  dark 
between  them.  He  admitted  perfectly  that  he  was 
at  fault,  but  to  say  that  he  was  sorry  was  a  mockery 
and  an  untruth.  He  was  not  sorry,  for  he  felt 
nothing. 

They  bore  the  burden  of  their  sullen  acquiescence 
in  silence  into  the  third  day,  and  then  she  said : 

"If  you  want  me  to  go,  I'll  go." 

"No!     No!     I'llgo." 

Silence  had  been  torture,  but  speech  was  racking. 
182 


TOYS 

They  were  at  the  mercy  of  words,  and  there  was  an 
awful  finality  about  the  word  go  which  neither  de- 
sired and  yet  neither  could  qualify.  .  .  .  Plainly 
she  had  been  weeping,  but  that  exasperated  him. 
She,  at  any  rate,  had  found  an  outlet,  and  he  had 
discovered  none.  And  all  the  time  he  was  haunted 
by  the  futility,  the  childishness  of  it  all. 

"Where  will  you  go?"  she  asked. 

"Does  it  matter?" 

"I  suppose  not.  But  some  one  must  look  after 
you." 

He  muttered  unintelligibly. 

Was  he — was  he  coming  back?  Of  course  he 
was.    He  would  let  her  know. 

He  went  to  Paris  and  stayed  in  his  old  hotel  in 
the  Rue  Daunou.  The  exhilaration  of  the  journey, 
the  spirit  of  amusement  that  is  in  the  air  of  the  city 
of  light,  buoyed  him  up  for  a  couple  of  days.  Hf 
dined  skillfully  and  procured  the  glow  of  satisfac- 
tion of  a  bottle  of  fine  wine,  sought  crowds  and  the 
curious  company  of  the  boulevards,  but  as  soon  as 
he  was  alone  again  his  inflation  collapsed  and  he 
took  pen,  paper  and  thick  paintlike  ink  and  wrote 
his  first  letter  to  her.  He  began  "my  love,"  crossed 
that  out  and  substituted  "my  dearest,"  tore  up  the 
sheet  of  paper  and  began  "my  dear."  He  pondered 
this  for  a  long  time  and  wrote  his  initials  and  circles 
and  squares  on  the  paper,  as  it  dawned  on  him  that 
for  the  first  time  for  nearly  thirty  years — well  over 
twenty,  at  any  rate — he  was  writing  a  love  letter, 
that  it  had  to  be  written,  and  that  the  last  series 

183 


OLD    MOLE 

upon  which  he  had  embarked  was  no  sort  of  model 
for  this.  He  chewed  the  ends  and  ragged  threads 
of  folly  of  his  twenties  and  was  astonished  at  the 
small  amount  of  truth  and  genuine  affection  he  could 
find  in  them,  wondered,  too,  what  had  become  of  the 
waters  of  the  once  so  easily  tapped  spring  of  ardor 
and  affection.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  could  mark 
the  very  moment  of  its  subterranean  plunge.  It 
had  been,  had  it  not,  when  he  had  made  his  fruitless 
effort  to  escape  from  Thrigsby,  when  he  had  ap- 
plied— in  vain — for  the  Australian  professorship. 
Then  he  had  shut  and  locked  the  door  upon  himself, 
and  he  remembered  clearly  the  day,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  term,  when  he  had,  with  glowing  excitement 
and  a  sort  of  tragical  humor,  saluted  his  Form  Room 
as  his  lasting  habitation.  .  .  .  Once  more  he 
scratched  H.  J.  B.  on  the  paper  before  him,  but  saw 
it  not,  for  clearly  in  his  mind  was  the  vision  of  Ma- 
tilda, lying  in  her  bed  with  her  hair  thrown  back 
over  her  pillow  and  her  hand  beneath  her  cheek,  and 
the  whiteness  of  her  throat  and  the  slenderness  of 
her  arms,  the  scent  of  her  hair.  .  .  .  His  heart  was 
full  again.  He  took  another  sheet  of  paper,  and, 
with  no  picking  of  phrases,  he  wrote : 

"My  little  one.  Are  there  still  the  marks  of  your 
tears  on  your  cheeks?  There  are  still  the  bruises  of 
my  own  obstinacy  upon  my  barren  old  heart.  I  am 
here,  miles  away  from  you,  in  another  country,  but 
I  am  more  with  you  than  I  have  ever  been.  What  a 
burden  I  must  have  been  upon  you !  It  must  have 
been  that  I  must  selfishly  have  felt  that.    One  would 

184 


TOYS 

suffer  more  from  being  a  burden  than  from  bearing 
a  burden.  (And  you  said:  'Who  will  look  after 
you?'  I  think  that  rasped  my  blown  vanity  more 
than  anything.)  One  would  suffer  more,  I  say,  if 
one  were  a  withered,  parched,  tedious  old  egoist,  as 
I  am.  Tell  me,  are  there  still  the  marks  of  your 
tears  on  your  cheeks?  I  cannot  bear  not  to  know. 
I  love  you.  Now  I  know  that  I  love  you.  If  this 
world  were  fairyland,  you  would  love  me.  But  this 
world  is  this  world.  And  it  is  the  richer,  as  I  am, 
by  my  love  for  you.  H.  J.  B.n 

As  feverishly  and  feather-headedly  as  a  boy  he 
skimmed  upon  the  air  to  post  this  letter,  and  as  he 
slipped  it  into  the  box  he  kissed  the  envelope,  and 
as  he  did  so  he  was  overcome  by  a  sense  of  the 
delicious  absurdity  of  his  love,  of  all  love,  and  he 
bowed  low  and  gravely  to  the  Opera  House  and 
said: 

"You  are  a  pimple  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  my 
friend,  but  my  love  is  the  blood  of  its  veins." 

He  packed  his  bag  before  he  went  to  bed,  was  up 
very  early  in  the  morning,  and,  as  soon  as  a  certain 
shop  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix  was  opened,  went  in  and 
bought  a  necklace  of  crystals  and  emeralds.  He  was 
in  London  by  six  o'clock  and  half  an  hour  later  in 
the  northern  express.  He  reached  Blackpool  before 
his  letter.  The  company  and  Matilda  were  gone. 
It  was  Sunday.  The  theater  was  closed  and  he  had 
lost  his  card  of  the  tour.  Watts  did  not  know.  He 
never  knew  anything.  Companies  came  and  went 
and  he  stayed,  as  he  said  with  his  weak,  watery 
smile,  "right  there,"  only  thankful  that  their  dam- 

185 


OLD    MOLE 

nable  tunes  were  gone  with  them.  Old  Mole  cursed 
him  for  an  idiot  and  hunted  up  the  stage  doorkeeper, 
whose  son  was  callboy  and  knew  everything.  He 
routed  them  out  of  bed,  got  the  information  he 
needed,  and  was  off  again  as  fast  as  a  cross-country 
train  could  carry  him. 

He  broke  in  on  Matilda  as  she  was  at  breakfast, 
rushed  at  her  boisterously.  Through  the  long  hours 
in  the  crawling  train,  with  the  dawn  creeping  gray, 
opal,  ripe  strawberry,  over  moors  and  craggy  hills, 
he  had  contrived  the  scene,  played  a  game  of  Con- 
sequences with  himself,  what  he  said  to  her  and 
what  she  said  to  him,  but  Matilda  peered  at  him 
and  in  a  dull,  husky  voice  said: 

"Oh!     It's  you." 

And  fatuously  he  stood  there  and  said: 

"Yes." 

She  was  pale  and  weary  and  there  were  deep 
marks  under  her  eyes.    She  said: 

"You  didn't  leave  me  any  money.  It  was  im- 
portant. We  got  here  last  night  and  then  they  told 
us  there'd  be  no  last  week's  salary.  They  didn't 
pay  us  on  Friday.  We  traveled  on  Sunday  as  usual, 
and  when  we  got  here  they  told  us.  Some  one  in 
London's  done  something.  Enid" — that  was  the 
name  of  the  knitting  woman — "Enid  looked  awful 
when  they  told  us,  quite  ill.  I  went  home  with  her, 
and  I've  been  up  with  her  all  night.  She  didn't  sleep 
a  wink,  but  went  on  counting  and  counting  out  loud, 
like  she  used  to  do  to  herself  in  the  train.  .  .  .  I've 
been  up  with  her  all  night,  but  it  wasn't  any  good, 

186 


TOYS 

because  in  the  morning,  when  the  dawn  came,  she 
got  up  and  walked  about  and  went  into  the  next 
room,  and  when  I  went  after  her  she  was  dead. 
And  if  I'd  only  had  a  little  money.  .  .  .  She  was 
a  good  woman  and  the  only  friend  I  had,  and  she 
killed  herself." 

He  sat  by  her  side  and  took  her  hand  and  soothed 
her. 

"But,  my  dear  child,  you  had  plenty  of  money  of 
your  own  in  the  bank,  and  your  own  checkbook." 

"I  didn't  know  I  was  to  spend  that.  It  was  in 
the  bank.  You  never  told  me  what  to  do  with  the 
book." 

And  to  find  something  to  say,  to  draw  her 
thoughts  off  the  miserable  tragedy,  he  explained  to 
her  the  mysteries  of  banking,  how,  when  you  have 
more  money  than  you  can  spend — she  had  never  had 
it  and  found  that  hard  to  grasp — you  pay  it  into 
your  account  and  it  is  entered  into  a  book,  and  how, 
if  it  is  a  great  deal  more  than  you  can  spend,  you 
lend  it  to  the  bank  and  they  pay  you  interest  for  it 
and  lend  it  to  other  people.  She  began  to  grasp  it 
at  last  and  to  see  that  the  money  was  really  hers 
and  she  would  be  putting  no  injury  nor  affront  upon 
the  bank  by  asking  for  some  of  it  by  means  of  a 
check.    Then  she  said: 

"Have  we  a  lot  of  money  in  the  bank?" 

"Not  an  enormous  quantity,  but  enough  to  go  on 
without  selling  out." 

"What  does  that  mean?" 

He  tried  to  explain  the  meaning  of  investments, 

is? 


OLD    MOLE 

of  stocks  and  shares,  but  that  was  beyond  her  capac- 
ity and  her  immediate  interest.  She  had  begun  to 
think  practically  of  her  money,  and  she  said: 
"Some  of  these  people  have  nothing  at  all." 
And  she  made  him  show  her  how  to  write  a  check, 
and  they  hunted  up  all  the  poorer  members  of  the 
company — those  who  had  any  money  were  already 
gone  in  search  of  work — and  she  gave  them  all 
enough  to  pay  their  rent  and  for  their  journey  to 
their  homes.  Then  she  wrote  to  Enid's  husband 
and  gave  him  all  sorts  of  messages  that  had  not  been 
entrusted  to  her,  said  that  thirty-five  shillings  had 
been  found  in  Enid's  purse  and  sent  that  amount 
to  him. 

They  stayed  for  the  inquest,  and  Enid's  husband 
came.  He  said  what  a  good  wife  she  had  been  to 
him,  and  what  cruel  times  they  had  been  through 
together,  and  how  he  couldn't  believe  it,  and  it 
wasn't  like  her  to  do  such  a  thing,  and  she  would 
have  been  another  Florence  St.  John  if  she  hadn't 
married  him,  and  he  hadn't  got  the  name  of  a  Jonah. 
"S'elp  me  God!"  he  said,  "she  was  the  right  stuff 
on  and  off  the  stage,  and  them  as  hasn't  had  cruel 
times  and  been  a  Jonah  won't  ever  understand  what 
she's  been  to  me."  Through  his  incoherence  there 
shone  a  beauty  of  dumb,  humble  and  trusting  love 
that  now  triumphed  over  death  as  it  had  triumphed 
over  the  monotonous,  degrading  slips  and  depriva- 
tions of  life.  Before  it  Old  Mole  bowed  his  head 
and  felt  a  sort  of  envy,  a  regret  that  he,  too,  had 
not  had  cruel  times  and  been  a  Jonah. 

188 


TOYS 

Clumsily  he  tried  to  tell  Matilda  how  he  felt,  but 
she  could  hardly  bear  to  talk  of  Enid  and  closed 
every  reference  to  her  with : 

"If  I  had  known  I  could  have  saved  her.  I  ought 
to  have  known." 

Even  worse  was  it  when  he  gave  her  the  necklace. 

From  the  scene  of  the  disaster  they  had  moved  to 
a  little  fishing  village  on  the  Yorkshire  coast  where 
they  lodged  in  the  cottage  of  a  widow  named  Storm, 
perched  halfway  up  a  cliff,  and  from  the  windows 
they  could  see  right  over  the  North  Sea,  smooth  as 
glass,  with  the  herring  fleet  dotted  like  flies  on  its 
gleaming  surface.  Here,  he  thought,  they  could 
overcome  their  difficulties  and  relax  the  tension 
brought  about  by  that  last  dark  experience.  There 
would  be  health  in  the  wide  sea  and  the  huge  cliffs 
and  the  moorland  air.  But  it  was  the  first  time  Ma- 
tilda had  been  out  of  the  crowd,  and  the  peace  and 
the  emptiness  induced  brooding  in  her. 

When  he  gave  her  the  necklace  she  took  it  out  of 
its  white  satin  and  velvet  case  and  fingered  it  and 
let  the  light  play  on  it.  Then  it  seemed  to  frighten 
her,  and  she  asked  how  much  it  had  cost.  He  told 
her. 

"It  seems  a  sin,"  said  she,  and  put  it  back  in  its 
case. 

That  night  she  received  his  letter  and  then  only 
she  seemed  to  understand  why  he  had  given  her  the 
necklace,  and  she  came  and  patted  his  shoulder  and 
kissed  the  top  of  his  head.  She  began  to  talk  of 
Enid,  how  she  never  complained  and  never  said  an 

189 


OLD   MOLE 

unkind  word  of  anybody,  and  how  proud  she  was  of 
two  little  trinkets,  a  brooch  and  a  bangle,  given  her 
by  her  husband,  which  she  said  she  had  never 
pawned  and  never  would. 

"The  world  seems  upside  down,"  said  Matilda. 

"No.  No,"  he  protested.  "It  is  all  as  it  should 
be,  as  it  must  be.  My  dear  child,  I  can't  tell  you 
how  sorry  I  am.  I  hurt  you,  made  things  hard  for 
you.  I  was  seeing  the  world  all  wrong.  Men  and 
women  seemed  only  toys.  .  .  ." 

"But  Enid  used  to  say,  you  can't  expect  anything 
from  people  when  they  have  to  think  of  money  all 
day  long." 

"When  did  she  say  that?" 

"When  her  husband  was  out  so  long  and  didn't 
write  to  her." 

"Did  she  love  him  very  much?" 

"Yes." 

"And  I  love  you." 

"Yes.     But.  .  .  .    It's  so  different." 

He  looked  at  her  and  she  met  his  gaze.  In  her 
eyes  there  was  a  strength,  a  determination,  a  depth 
that  were  new  to  her.  It  stimulated  him,  braced 
him,  and  he  felt  that  something  was  awakened  in 
her,  something  that  demanded  of  him,  demanded, 
insisted.  He  was  ashamed  of  his  letter,  ashamed 
that  he  had  given  her  the  necklace,  ashamed  that 
when  she  demanded  of  him  the  glory  of  life  he  had 
thought  no  higher  than  to  give  her  pleasure. 

So  he  was  flung  back  into  torment,  and  where  be- 
fore he  saw  humanity  and  its  infinite  variety  as 

190 


TOYS 

smaller  than  himself,  now,  with  full  swing  to  the 
opposite  pole  of  exaggeration,  he  saw  it  as  immeas- 
urably larger  and  superior,  full  of  a  mighty  purpose, 
ebbing  and  flowing  like  the  sea,  while,  perched  above 
the  fringe  of  it,  he  cowered. 

He  concealed  his  distress  from  her.  He  was  not 
so  far  gone  but  he  could  delight  in  the  scents  and 
sounds  of  the  country,  and  he  would  tramp  away 
over  the  moors  or  along  the  cliffs  by  himself,  lie  in 
the  heather  and  smoke  and  watch  the  clouds,  real, 
full-bellied  clouds,  lumbering  and  far  off  shedding  a 
gray  gauze  of  rain.  He  would  fill  his  lungs  with  the 
keen  air  and  return  home  hungry  to  sup  on  plain 
cottage  fare  or  delicious  herrings  fresh  from  the 
sea. 

One  night,  to  please  him,  Matilda  wore  the  neck- 
lace. It  was  pathetically  out  of  place  on  her  cheap 
little  blouse,  incongruous  in  their  surroundings,  the 
stiff,  crowded  fisherman's  parlor. 

It  was  that  decided  him.  There  must  be  an  end 
of  drifting.  Sink  or  swim,  they  must  endeavor  to 
take  their  place  in  the  world.  They  would  go  to 
London.  If  among  the  third-rate  mummers  who 
had  been  their  company  for  so  long  Matilda  could 
so  wonderfully  grow  and  expand,  what  might  she 
not,  would  she  not,  do  among  gentler,  riper  souls? 
And,  for  himself,  he  would  seek  out  a  task.  There 
must  be  in  England  men  of  active  minds  and  keen 
imaginations,  men  among  whom  he  could  find,  if  not 
the  answers  to,  at  least  an  interest  in,  the  questions 
that  came  leaping  in  upon  him.    They  would  go  to 

191 


OLD    MOLE 

London  and  make  a  home,  and  Matilda  should  be 
the  mistress  of  it.  She  should  live  her  own  life,  and 
he  his,  and  there  would  be  an  end  of  the  strain 
between  them,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  most  fruit- 
ful comradeship. 

Once  again  the  immediate  execution  of  his  plans 
was  frustrated.  A  strike  was  declared  on  the  rail- 
ways of  Great  Britain,  and  it  became  impossible  for 
them  to  move,  for  they  were  on  a  branch  line.  Let- 
ters and  newspapers  were  brought  nine  miles  by 
road  and  there  was  no  lack  of  food.  The  news- 
papers for  a  week  devoted  four  columns  to  the  story 
of  the  strike,  then  three  columns,  then  two,  then  one. 
A  little  war  broke  out  in  the  Persian  Gulf.  That 
dominated  the  strike,  which  lasted  three  weeks,  and 
ended  in  the  intervention  of  the  Government,  with 
neither  the  companies  nor  the  men  yielding. 

The  village  had  its  Socialists,  the  postman  and 
the  fish  buyer,  and,  in  the  beginning  of  it,  they  talked 
excitedly  of  a  general  strike;  the  dockers  would 
come  out  and  the  carters;  every  port  would  be 
closed,  transport  at  a  standstill;  the  miners  would 
lay  down  their  tools,  and  such  frightful  losses  would 
be  inflicted  on  the  capitalists  that  they  would  be 
unable  to  pursue  their  undertakings.  They  would 
be  taken  out  of  their  hands  and  worked  by  the  labor- 
ers for  the  laborers,  and  then  there  would  be  the 
beginnings  of  justice  upon  the  earth  and  the  laborers 
would  begin  to  enjoy  the  good  things  of  the  world. 
Old  Mole  asked  them  what  they  meant  by  the  good 

192 


TOYS 

things  of  the  world,  and  the  answer  was  strangely 
Hebraic — a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  where 
men  labored  for  six  days  (eight  hours  a  day)  and 
rested  the  seventh  day,  and  had  time  to  talk  and 
think.  They  set  an  enormous  value  on  talking  and 
thinking,  and  all  their  enthusiasm  was  for  "settling 
questions."  The  land  would  be  "settled,"  and  educa- 
tion, and  housing,  and  insurance,  and  consumption, 
and  lead  poisoning.  Each  "question"  was  separated 
from  every  other;  each  existed  apart  from  every- 
thing else,  and  each  had  its  nostrum,  the  prescrip- 
tion for  which  was  deferred  until  the  destruction  of 
the  capitalists,  and  the  liberation  of  the  middle 
classes  from  their  own  middle  classishness — (for 
these  Socialists  detested  the  middle  classes  even  more 
than  the  capitalists) — had  placed  the  ingredients  in 
their  hands.  The  "questions"  had  to  be  settled;  the 
capitalists  had  created  them,  the  middle  classes,  like 
sheep,  accepted  them;  the  "questions"  had  to  be 
settled  once  for  all,  and  therefore  the  capitalists  had 
to  be  ruined  and  the  middle  classes  squeezed  in 
their  pockets  and  stomachs  until  they  surrendered 
and  accepted  the  new  ordering  of  the  world  in  jus- 
tice, brotherhood,  and  equality.  Already  the  strike 
was  doing  damage  at  the  rate  of  hundreds  and  thou- 
sands a  week,  and  they  had  caught  the  bulk  of  the 
middle  classes  in  their  holidays,  and  thousands  of 
them  would  be  unable  to  get  back  to  their  work. 

In  the  thick  of  it  Old  Mole,  to  satisfy  himself, 
walked  over  to  that  town  which  is  advertised  as  the 
Queen  of  Watering  Places.    There  were  thousands 

193 


OLD    MOLE 

of  the  middle  classes  on  the  sands.  Their  children 
were  sprawling  on  sand  castles  and  dabbling  in  the 
thin  washings  of  the  sea.  Fathers  and  mothers 
were  lounging  in  deck  chairs,  sleeping  under  hand- 
kerchiefs and  hats  and  umbrellas;  grandmothers 
were  squattting  in  charge  of  their  grandchildren. 
Some  of  them  were  reading  about  the  strike  in  the 
newspapers.  At  teatime  the  beach  was  cleared  as 
though  all  human  beings  had  been  blown  from  it  by 
a  sea  breeze.  An  hour  later  it  was  thickly  thronged 
and  the  pierrots  in  their  little  open-air  theater  were 
playing  to  an  enormous  audience.  The  strike  had 
prolonged  their  holiday;  they  were  prepared  to  go 
on  in  its  monotony  instead  of  in  the  monotony  of 
their  work  and  domestic  life.  They  were  quite  con- 
tented, dully  acceptant.  There  were  no  trains? 
Very  well,  then;  they  would  wait  until  there  were 
trains.  Respectable,  well-behaved,  orderly,  genteel 
people  do  not  starve.   .   .   .    And  they  were  right. 

However,  it  set  Old  Mole  thinking  about  his  own 
means,  the  independence  which  he  owed  to  no  virtue 
nor  talent,  nor  thrift  of  his  own,  but  to  a  system 
which  he  did  not  understand,  to  sources  which  in  the 
intricacies  of  their  journey  to  himself  were  impos- 
sible to  follow.  Of  the  many  enterprises  all  over  the 
world,  in  the  profits  of  which  he  had  his  share,  he 
knew  nothing  at  all.  The  reports  that  were  sent  to 
him  were  too  boring  or  too  technical  to  read.  The 
postman  and  the  fish  buyer  assured  him  that  he  was 
living  upon  the  underpaid  and  overtaxed  labors 
of  thousands  of  unhappy  men  and  women.    He  had 

194 


TOYS 

no  reason  for  disbelieving  them,  but,  on  the  whole, 
his  sympathies  were  with  the  middle-classes,  his 
attitude  theirs;  that  respectable,  well-behaved,  or- 
derly, genteel  people  do  not  starve.  Not  that  he 
classed  himself  with  them;  he  disliked  the  memory 
of  his  colleagues  at  Thrigsby,  of  the  men  at  the 
golf  club  at  Bigley  more  than  anything,  and  at  this 
time  he  was  not  moderate  in  his  dislikes.  He 
warmed  to  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Socialists,  but  was 
exasperated  by  the  manner  in  which,  after  having 
made  a  clean  sweep  of  everything  except  themselves 
and  their  kind,  they  could  produce  no  constructive 
idea,  but  only  a  thin  cerebral  fluid,  done  up  in  dif- 
ferent colored  bottles  as  in  a  pharmacy.  Just  at  the 
point  when  he  found  himself  beginning  to  dream  of 
a  world  of  decent,  kindly,  human  beings  delivered 
(as  far  as  possible)  from  their  own  folly  and  the 
tyrannies  bred  from  it,  they  left  humanity  alto- 
gether and  gloated  hectically  over  their  "questions. " 

If  that  were  Socialism,  he  would  have  none  of  it; 
he  preferred  money.  He  told  them  so,  and  found 
that  he  had  uttered  the  most  appalling  blasphemy. 
They  said  that  Socialism  was  a  religion,  the  religion 
that  would  save  the  world. 

Said  Old  Mole : 

"There  have  been  Hebraism,  Buddhism,  Moham- 
medanism, Christianity,  the  worship  of  Isis  and 
Osiris,  the  worship  of  the  Bull,  the  Cat,  the  Snake, 
the  Sun,  the  Moon,  the  Stars,  the  Phallus;  there 
have  been  prophets  without  number  and  martyrs 
more  than  I  can  say,  saints  for  every  day  in  the 

*95 


OLD    MOLE 

year  and  more,  and  none  of  them  has  saved  the 
world.  More  than  that,  I  will  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  none  of  them  has  done  as  much  to  raise  the 
standard  of  living  as  money." 

"Damn  it  all,"  said  the  fish  buyer,  "I'm  not 
talking  about  superstitions.  I'm  talking  about 
ideas." 

"Money  also  is  an  idea,"  replied  Old  Mole,  "and 
it  is  as  generally  misunderstood  as  any  other." 

He  was  beginning  to  be  rather  excited,  for  he  felt 
that  he  was  getting  the  better  of  the  argument,  and 
would  not  allow  himself  to  see  that  he  had  flound- 
ered on  to  the  debater's  trick  of  shunting  his  oppo- 
nents on  to  unfamiliar  country.  They  had  gone  up 
and  down  one  stretch  of  line,  between  two  points — 
capitalism  and  labor — for  so  long,  without  looking 
on  either  side  of  them,  that  it  needed  only  a  very 
slight  adjustment  or  transposition  of  terms  to  re- 
duce them  to  a  beating  of  the  void.  They  clung  to 
their  point,  and  the  postman  at  last  said  trium- 
phantly : 

"But  money  isn't  a  religion;  Socialism  is — the 
religion,  the  only  religion  of  the  working  classes  of 
this  country.  They've  had  enough  of  the  next  world; 
they  want  a  bit  o'  this  for  a  change." 

"So  do  I,"  returned  Old  Mole,  "all  of  it.  I  say 
that  money  is  an  idea,  perhaps  the  only  practicable 
idea  in  the  world  at  present.  It  isn't  a  religious 
idea  simply  because  men  as  a  whole  are  not  re- 
ligious. It  has  the  advantage  over  your  Socialism 
that  it  is  a  part  of  life  as  it  is,  while  your  religion, 

196 


TOYS 

as  you  call  it,  is  only  a  straining  after  the  future  life, 
an  edifice  without  a  foundation,  for  to  bring  about 
its  realization  you  have  to  hew  and  cut  and  shape 
human  nature  to  fit  into  the  conditions  of  your  fan- 
tasy. If  I  wanted  to  be  a  prophet,  which  I  don't — 
I  should  base  my  vision  on  money.  There  would  be 
some  chance  then  of  everybody  understanding  it  and 
really  taking  it  into  his  life.  If  you  could  make 
money  a  religious  idea — that  is,  make  money  a  thing 
which  men  would  respect  and  revere  and  abuse  as 
little  as  possible — you  would  very  likely  produce 
something — deeds,  not  words  and  questions." 

"Don't  you  call  the  strike  'doing  something'  ?" 
cried  the  fish  buyer. 

uWe  shall  see,"  replied  Old  Mole. 

The  postman  filled  his  cutty  and  laughed: 

"Don't  you  see,"  he  said  to  the  fish  buyer,  "that 
he  is  pulling  your  leg?" 

So,  convinced  of  their  superiority,  they  abandoned 
the  discussion. 

His  tussles  with  these  Jeremiahs  of  the  Yorkshire 
village  gave  Old  Mole  the  confidence  he  needed,  and 
the  exultant  glow  of  a  sharpening  of  the  wits,  which 
are  like  razors,  most  apt  to  cut  the  wielder  of  them 
when  they  are  most  dull.  He  tortured  himself  no 
more  with  his  failure  to  satisfy  Matilda,  but  laid 
all  his  hopes  in  the  future  and  the  amusing  life  in 
London  that  he  wished  to  create  for  her.  Intensely 
he  desired  her  to  develop  her  own  life,  to  grow  into 
the  splendid  creature  he  now  saw  struggling  beneath 
the  crust  of  ignorance  and  prejudice  and  shyness  and 

197 


OLD    MOLE 

immaturity  that  hemmed  her  in.  There  was  such 
beauty  in  her,  and  he  had  failed  to  make  it  his,  a 
part  of  himself,  and  in  his  blundering  efforts  to 
teach  her,  to  lead  her  on  to  the  realization  and  gift 
of  herself,  he  had  wounded  her  even  when  he  most 
adored  her.  .  .  .  The  dead  woman,  Enid,  had  been 
more  to  her  than  he  had  ever  been.  He  saw  that 
now.  She  had  known  in  that  woman's  lift  some- 
thing that  was  not  in  her  own,  and  she  desired  it; 
how  much  it  was  painful  to  see.  She  never  looked 
for  it  in  him,  but  gazed  in  upon  herself  in  a  sort  of 
pregnancy  of  the  soul.  And,  like  a  pregnant  woman, 
she  must  be  satisfied  in  her  whimsies,  she  must  have 
her  desires  anticipated,  she  must  be  given  the  color 
and  brightness  of  life,  now  before  her  sensitiveness 
had  passed  away  for  want  of  fair  impressions. 
These  she  had  been  denied  in  the  young  years  of  her 
life.  She  must  have  them.  .  .  .  She  must  have 
them.  .  .  . 

She  accepted  his  proposal  to  go  to  London  with- 
out enthusiasm.  She  thought  over  it  for  some  time 
and  at  last  she  said: 

"Yes.  It  will  be  best  for  you.  I  don't  want  you 
to  go  away  again." 

And  the  night  before  they  left,  when  the  train- 
service  was  restored,  she  took  out  the  necklace  as  she 
was  undressing  and  tried  it  on,  and  looked  at  herself 
in  the  mirror  and  said: 

"Fd  like  to  wear  this  in  London.  But  I  shall  want 
an  evening  dress,  shaVt  I?" 

198 


TOYS 

She  smiled  at  him.  His  heart  overflowed  and 
colored  the  workings  of  his  mind  with  a  full  humor. 
He  thought: 

"If  there  be  ideas,  how  better  can  they  be  ex- 
pressed than  in  terms  of  Matilda?" 


IN  THE   SWIM 

Whoever  has  an  ambition  to  be  heard  in  a 
crowd  must  press,  and  squeeze,  and  thrust, 
and  climb,  with  indefatigable  pains,  till  he 
has  exalted  himself  to  a  certain  degree  of 
altitude  above  them. 

A  TALE  OF  A  TUB 


IN   THE    SWIM 

THEY  stayed  at  first  in  one  of  the  hotels  de- 
signed to  give  provincials  bed  and  breakfast 
for  five  shillings,  for  visitors  to  London  do 
not  mind  in  how  much  they  are  mulcted  in  pursuit 
of  pleasure,  but  resent  the  payment  of  an  extra 
farthing  for  necessaries.  They  were  high  up  on  the 
fifth  floor  and  could  see  right  over  many  roofs  and 
chimneys  to  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's.  They  saw  the 
sights  and  lunched  and  dined  in  restaurants,  and 
went  by  river  to  Greenwich,  by  tram  to  Kew,  and 
Old  Mole  was  forced  to  admit  that  it  is  possible  to 
fall  short  of  a  philosophic  conception  of  happiness 
and  yet  to  have  a  very  amusing  time.  It  was  Ma- 
tilda's ambition  to  go  to  every  theater  in  London. 
She  found  it  possible  to  enjoy  everything,  and  there- 
fore he  was  not  bored. 

Sheer  physical  exhaustion  brought  their  pleasure- 
seeking  to  an  end,  and  they  set  about  finding  a  habi- 
tation. On  their  arrival  Old  Mole  had  written  to 
his  brother,  but  had  had  no  reply.  At  last  a  scrubby 
clerk  arrived  with  a  note: 

"So  glad  you  have  come  to  your  senses.  Come  to 
lunch,  1. 1 5.— R.  B." 

203 


OLD    MOLE 

They  went  to  lunch  in  Gray's  Inn,  and  after  so 
much  frequenting  of  public  places  it  was  deliriously 
peaceful  to  sink  into  private  armchairs  among  per- 
sonal belongings  and  a  goodly  company  of  books. 
Robert  was  very  genial  and  kissed  Matilda  and  de- 
livered her  over  to  his  laundress  for  the  inevitable 
feminine  preparations  for  a  meal.  While  she  was 
.away  he  told  Old  Mole  that  he  had  taken  silk,  and 
was  retiring  from  the  Bar,  and  building  himself  a 
house  at  Sunningdale,  for  the  links,  and  was  looking 
out  for  a  suitable  tenant.  If  Old  Mole  liked  to  keep 
a  room  for  him  he  could  have  the  place  practically 
as  it  stood,  on  a  two-thirds  sharing  basis.  ...  It 
were  hard  to  find,  in  London,  a  pleasanter  place. 
The  windows  looked  out  onto  the  rookery,  the  rooms 
were  of  beautiful  design  and  proportion,  and  there 
were  eight  of  them  altogether  distributed  over  two 
floors,  communicating  by  a  charming  oak-balustraded 
staircase. 

"I've  lived  here  for  thirty  years,"  said  Robert, 
"and  I'd  like  it  kept  in  the  family." 

Old  Mole  was  delighted.  It  saved  all  the  vexa- 
tion and  discomfort  of  finding  and  furnishing  a 
house,  and  here,  ready-made,  was  the  atmosphere 
of  culture  and  comfort  he  was  seeking  and  inwardly 
designing  for  the  blossoming  of  Matilda. 

Robert  beamed  on  her  when  she  came  in,  and 
said: 

"We've  made  a  plan." 

She  was  properly  excited. 

"Yes.    You're  going  to  live  here." 
204 


IX    THE    SWIM 

"Here?  .  .  .  Oh!"  And  she  looked  about 
among  the  pictures  and  the  old  furniture  and  the 
rich  curtains  and  hangings,  and  timidly,  shyly,  as 
though  she  were  not  certain  how  they  would  take  it, 
adopted  them. 

They  made  her  sit  at  the  head  of  the  table  and 
placed  themselves  on  either  side  of  her,  and,  as 
Robert  poured  her  out  a  glass  of  wine  (Berncastler 
Doktor),  he  said: 

"You  know,  the  old  place  has  always  wanted 
this." 

"Wanted — what?"  asked  Matilda.  "I  think  it's 
perfect." 

"A  charming  hostess,"  said  Robert,  with  an  elab- 
orate little  bow  of  courtliness. 

A  fortnight  later  saw  Robert  installed  at  Sunning- 
dale  and  the  Beenhams  in  occupation  of  his  cham- 
bers. They  shared  only  the  dining-room;  Old  Mole 
had  the  upstairs  rooms  and  Matilda  those  down- 
stairs. It  was  his  arrangement,  and  came  from 
reaction  against  the  closeness  in  which  they  had  lived 
during  the  long  pilgrimage  from  lodging  to  lodging. 

Once  a  fortnight  Robert  engaged  Old  Mole  to 
play  golf  with  him,  and  he  consented  because  he 
desired  to  give  Matilda  as  full  a  liberty  as  she  could 
desire.  In  the  alternate  weeks  Robert  came  to  stay 
for  two  nights  and  occupied  his  room  next  to  Old 
Mole's.  He  would  take  them  out  to  dinner  and  the 
theater,  and  after  it  the  brothers  would  sit  up  yarn- 
ing until  the  small  hours,  and  always  the  discussion 
would  begin  by  Robert  saying: 

205 


OLD    MOLE 

"  Ton  my  honor,  women  are  extraordinary!1' 
And  then,  completely  to  his  own  satisfaction,  he 
would  produce  those  generalizations  which,  in  Eng- 
land, pass  for  a  knowledge  of  human  nature,  and 
Old  Mole  would  recognize  them  as  old  companions 
of  his  own.  They  were  too  absurd  for  anger,  but 
Robert's  persistence  would  annoy  him,  and  he  would 
say: 

"When  you  live  with  a  woman  you  are  continually 
astonished  to  find  that  she  is  a  human  being." 

"Human,"  answered  Robert,  sweetening  the  sen- 
timent with  a  sip  of  port,  "with  something  of  the 
angel." 

"Angel  be  damned,"  came  in  explosive  protest, 
"women  are  just  as  human  as  ourselves,  and  rather 
more  so." 

"Ah!"  said  Robert,  with  blissful  inconsequence, 
"but  it  doesn't  do  to  let  'em  know  it." 

Robert's  contemptuous  sentimentalization  of 
women  so  bothered  Old  Mole  that  he  sought  to 
probe  for  its  sources.  Among  the  books  in  the 
chambers  were  many  modern  English  novels,  and 
he  found  nearly  all  of  them,  in  varying  formulae, 
dealing  axiomatically  with  woman  as  an  extraneous 
animal  unaccountably  attached  to  the  species,  a  crea- 
ture fearfully  and  wonderfully  ignorant  of  the  af- 
fairs of  the  world,  of  her  own  physical  processes,  of 
the  most  elementary  rules  of  health,  morality,  and 
social  existence,  capricious,  soulless,  unscrupulous, 
scheming,  intriguing,  concerned  wholly  and  solely 
with  marriage,  if  she  were  a  "good"  woman,  with 

206 


IN    THE    SWIM 

the  destruction  of  marriage  if  she  were  "bad";  at 
best  being  a  sort  of  fairy — (Robert's  "angel")  — 
whose  function  and  destiny  were  to  pop  the  sugar- 
plum of  love  into  the  mouths  of  virtuous  men.  The 
most  extreme  variant  of  this  conception  was  to  be 
found  in  the  works  of  Robert  Wherry,  who,  in  a 
syrupy  medium,  depicted  women  as  virginal  mothers 
controlling  and  comforting  a  world  of  conceited, 
helpless  little  boys.  Wherry  was  enormously  suc- 
cessful, and  he  had  many  imitators,  but  none  of  them 
had  his  supreme  audacity  or  his  canny  belief  in  the 
falsehood  which  was  his  only  stock  in  trade.  The 
trait  of  Wherry  was  upon  all  the  novels  in  Robert's 
collection.  Even  among  the  "advanced"  novels  the 
marks  of  the  beast  were  there.  They  advanced  not 
by  considering  life,  but  by  protest  against  Wherry. 
They  said,  in  effect,  "Woman  is  not  a  mother,  she  is 
a  huntress  of  men,  or  a  social  worker,  or  a  mistress 
—  (the  conscious  audacity  in  using  that  word!) — or 
a  parasite,  or  a  tyrant;  and  one  bold  fellow  said, 
"She  has  breasts";  he  said  it  not  once,  but  on  every 
fifth  page  in  every  book.  Old  Mole  found  him  even 
more  disgusting  than  Wherry,  who  at  least,  in  his 
dexterity,  might  be  supposed  to  give  pleasure  to 
young  girls  and  foolish,  inexperienced  persons  of 
middle  age — (like  Robert) — and  no  great  harm  be 
done. 

To  protect  himself  against  the  uncleanness  of 
these  books  he  took  down  "Rabelais,"  which  Robert 
kept  tucked  away  on  his  highest  shelf.  And  when 
he   had   driven   off   the   torpor   in   his   blood   and 

207 


OLD    MOLE 

thoughts  induced  by  the  slavishness  of  Robert's  mod- 
ern literature,  he  told  himself  that  it  was  folly  to 
take  it  seriously: 

"There  have  always  been  bad  books,"  he  said. 
"The  good  survive  in  the  love  of  good  readers. 
Good  taste  is  always  the  same,  but  vicious  taste  is 
blown  away  by  the  cleansing  winds  of  the  soul." 

All  the  same,  he  could  not  so  easily  away  with 
modern  literature,  for  he  was  suffering  from  the  itch 
to  write,  and  had  already  half-planned,  being,  like 
every  one  else,  subject  to  the  moral  disease  of  the 
time,  an  essay  on  Woman.  Wherry  and  the  rest 
brought  him  up  sharp:  they  made  him  very  angry, 
but  they  made  him  perceive  in  himself  many  of  the 
distressing  symptoms  he  had  found  in  them.  He 
gave  more  thought  to  them,  and,  though  he  knew 
nothing  of  how  these  books  were  written,  or  of  the 
conditions  under  which  literature  was  at  that  time 
produced  and  marketed,  he  came  to  see  these  men 
and  women  as  mountebanks  in  a  fair,  each  shouting 
outside  a  little  tent.  "Come  inside  and  see  what 
Woman  is  like."  And  some  showed  bundles  of 
clothes,  with  nobody  inside  them ;  and  some  showed 
life-size  dolls;  and  some  showed  women  nude  to  the 
waist;  and  some  showed  women  with  bared  legs;  and 
some  showed  women  in  pink  fleshings;  and  some 
showed  naked  women  who  had  lost  their  modesty, 
and  therefore  could  not  be  gazed  upon  without  of- 
fence. 

He  pondered  his  own  essay,  and  recognized  that 
its  subject  was  not  Woman,  but  Matilda.     In  that 

208 


IN    THE    SWIM 

gallery  he  could  not  show  her,  nor  could  he,  without 
shame,  display  her  to  the  public  view.  And  therein, 
it  seemed  to  him,  he  had  touched  the  secret  of  all 
these  lewd  exhibitions.  The  displayers  of  them,  in 
their  impatient  haste  to  catch  the  pennies  of  the 
public,  or  admiration,  or  whatever  they  might  be 
desiring,  were  presenting,  raw,  confused  and  unim- 
agined,  their  own  unfelt  and  uncogitated  experience, 
or,  sometimes,  an  extension  of  their  experience,  in 
which,  by  an  appalling  logic,  while  they  limned  life 
as  they  would  like  to  live  it,  they  were  led  to  the 
limits  of  unreason  and  egoistic  folly.  In  presenta- 
tion or  extension,  only  those  shows  had  any  com- 
pelling force  in  which  egoism  was  complete  and  en- 
tire lack  of  feeling  relieved  the  showmen  of  fine 
scruples  or  human  decency.  Where  shreds  of  de- 
cency were  left  they  only  served  to  show  up  the 
horrible  obscenity  of  the  rest. 

Looking  at  it  in  this  light — and  there  seemed  no 
other  way  of  correlating  this  literature  with  human 
life — Old  Mole  was  distressed. 

"It  is  bad  enough,"  he  thought,  "when  they  make 
a  public  show  of  their  emotions,  but  when  they 
parade  emotions  they  never  had,  that  is  the  abomina- 
tion of  desolation." 

Matilda  read  some  of  them.  She  gulped  them 
down  at  the  rate  of  two  in  an  evening,  but  when  he 
tried  to  discuss  them  with  her  she  had  nothing  to 
say  about  them.  To  her  they  were  just  stories,  to 
be  read  and  forgotten.  He  tried  to  persuade  him- 
self that  she  was  right,  at  any  rate  more  sensible 

209 


OLD    MOLE 

than  himself,  but  could  get  no  further  than  the  ad- 
mission of  the  fact  that  she  had  no  feeling  for  liter- 
ature and  would  just  as  soon  read  a  cash-made  piece 
of  hackwork  as  a  masterpiece.  That  led  him  back 
to  the  subject  of  his  essay  and  woman's  indifference 
to  ideas  and  idealism.  He  had  been  considering  it 
as  a  general  proposition,  but  he  was  forced  to  admit 
that  it  was  in  truth  only  Matilda's  indifference  to 
his  own  ideas,  and  he  was  not  at  all  sure  but  she 
possessed  something  much  more  valuable,  a  power 
to  assimilate  ideas  when  they  had  taken  flesh  and 
become  a  part  of  the  life  that  is  lived.  He  knew 
that  he  was  using  her  as  a  test,  a  touchstone,  and 
through  her  he  had  learned  to  tolerate  many  things 
which  his  reason  scouted.  As  a  practical  criterion 
for  life  and  living  (two  very  different  things,  as  he 
was  beginning  dimly  to  perceive) — she  was  very 
valuable  to  him,  but  it  was  when  he  passed  on  to 
the  things  of  art  and  found  himself  faced  with  the 
need  of  getting  or  begetting  clear  conceptions  of 
phenomena,  in  his  search  for  the  underlying,  connect- 
ing and  resolving  truth,  that  she  failed  him.  She 
said  he  thought  too  much.  Perhaps  he  did,  but  it 
was  a  part  of  his  way  of  living,  and  he  could  not 
rest  content  with  his  relation  with  her,  except  he  had 
also  his  idea  of  her.  It  was  a  relief  to  him,  and  he 
felt  he  was  greatly  advanced  along  the  road  by 
which  he  was  traveling  when  he  found  her  in  the 
National  Gallery  among  the  five  singing  women  of 
the  Nativity  of  Piero  della  Francesca.  That 
discovery  gave  her  an  existence  in  the  world  of  art. 

210 


IN   THE    SWIM 

He  told  her   about  the   picture   and  took  her  to 
see  it. 

"Good  Lord!"  she  said.  "Is  that  what  you  think 
I'm  like  ?" 

She  had  thrilled  to  London.  She  used  to  say  she 
would  like  to  go  back  into  the  provinces  just  to  have 
again  the  pleasure  of  arriving  at  the  station  and 
coming  out  into  the  roar  of  the  traffic  and  the  won- 
derful London  smell.  The  shops  had  bowled  her 
over.  Cities  she  had  known  where  there  was  one 
street  of  elegant  shops,  towns  where  there  might  be 
one  shop  whose  elegance  lifted  it  high  above  all  the 
rest,  but  here  there  were  miles  and  miles  of  them. 
She  discovered  them  for  herself,  and  then  took  her 
husband  to  see  the  magical  region  of  Oxford  Street 
and  Regent  Street.  In  Bond  Street  they  saw  a  neck- 
lace just  like  hers,  and  a  most  elegant  young  man 
went  into  the  shop  and  the  necklace  was  taken  out 
of  the  window.  She  saw  hats  and  coats  and  tailor- 
mades  that  she  bought  "in  her  mind,"  as  she  said, 
for  she  was  still  scared  of  money,  and  he  could  not 
induce  her  to  be  anything  but  frugal.  (She  would 
walk  a  mile  to  save  a  penny  bus  fare.)  .  .  .  When 
they  went  into  Gray's  Inn  and  Robert  removed  his 
curtains  and  some  of  his  furniture,  she  asked  if  she 
might  buy  some  of  her  things  herself,  and  they 
visited  the  great  stores.  She  quickly  lost  her  awe 
of  them,  and  when  she  had  drawn  two  or  three 
checks  for  amounts  staggering  to  her  who  had  lived 
all  her  life  cooped  in  by  a  weekly  financial  crisis,  she 

211 


OLD    MOLE 

applied  her  mind  to  the  problem,  and  did  many  little 
sums  on  scraps  of  paper  to  reassure  herself  that  she 
had  not  shaken  the  bank's  faith  in  her  stability  and 
honesty.  It  ceased  to  be  a  miracle  to  her,  but  she 
hated  drawing  checks  to  herself,  for  cash  vanished 
so  easily  and  unaccountably,  while  for  checks  made 
payable  to  tradespeople  she  always  had  something 
to  show.  In  this  state  of  mind  she  decided,  and,  as 
something  momentous,  announced  her  decision  to 
buy  an  evening  dress.  It  was  no  light  undertaking. 
A  week  passed  before  she  found  the  material,  and 
when  she  had  bought  it — (for  in  her  world  you  al- 
ways had  dresses  "made  up") — she  was  doubtful  of 
her  taste,  and  as  dubious  of  Old  Mole's.  She  bought 
the  Era  and  looked  up  the  address  of  the  second 
girl  in  the  pantomime,  who  remained  to  her  the 
smartest  woman  of  her  acquaintance.  Curiosity  as 
to  the  address  in  Gray's  Inn  brought  the  "second 
girl"  flying  to  her  aid;  she  was  delighted  to  be  of 
use  and  undertook  to  show  Matilda  the  ins  and  outs 
of  the  shops  and  "the  dear  old  West  End."  She 
gave  counsel  as  to  trimming,  knew  of  an  admirable 
dressmaker  near  Hanover  Square,  "ever  so  cheap." 
The  dressmaker  also  sold  hats,  and  Matilda  bought 
hats  for  herself  and  her  friend.  The  dressmaker 
also  sold  opera  cloaks,  and  Matilda  bought  an  opera 
cloak.  The  dress  and  the  cloak  necessitated,  en- 
forced, finer  stockings,  shoes,  gloves  than  any  Ma- 
tilda possessed,  and  these  also  she  purchased.  .  .  . 
When  all  these  acquisitions  came  home  she  laid 
them  out  on  her  bed  and  gazed  at  them  in  alarm  and 

212 


IN   THE    SWIM 

pleasure.  It  was  the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  but 
she  changed  every  stitch  of  her  clothing  and  donned 
everything  new,  the  dress  and  the  opera  cloak,  the 
necklace,  and,  as  she  had  seen  the  ladies  do  in  the 
theater,  she  wore  a  ribbon  through  her  hair.  In 
this  guise  Old  Mole  surprised  her.  He  was  ravished 
by  her  loveliness,  but  was  so  taken  aback  by  all  these 
secret  doings,  so  tickled  by  her  simplicity,  that  he 
laughed.  He  laughed  indulgently,  but  he  sapped  her 
confidence,  reduced  all  her  pleasure  to  ashes,  and 
there  were  tears,  and  she  wished  she  had  never  come 
to  London,  and  she  knew  she  was  not  good  enough 
for  him,  but  he  need  not  so  plainly  tell  her  so  nor 
scorn  her  when  she  tried  to  make  herself  so:  other 
women  had  pretty  clothes,  women,  too,  who  were 
hard  put  to  it  to  make  a  living. 

He  soothed  her  and  said  if  she  would  wear  her 
silks  and  fine  array  he  would  take  her  out  next  time 
Robert  came. 

"I  don't  want  to  go  out  with  Robert." 

"Why  not?" 

"If  I'm  not  good  enough  to  know  your  sister,  I'm 
not  good  enough  to  know  your  brother." 

"That  isn't  reasonable." 

She  was  ruffled  and  hot,  and  in  her  heart  annoyed 
with  him  for  coming  in  on  her  like  that,  for  she  had 
planned  to  take  him  by  surprise  on  their  first  even- 
ing's pleasuring.  She  did  not  want  to  be  soothed, 
and  preferred  sparring. 

"Your  sister's  in  town,  isn't  she?" 

"Yes." 

213 


OLD    MOLE 

"Have  you  seen  her?" 
"No." 

"You  have." 

"I  have  not." 

He  knew  why  she  was  sparring;  he  knew  that  to 
disappoint  a  woman  in  the  vanity  of  her  clothes  is 
more  immediately  dangerous  than  to  treat  her  with 
deliberate  insult  or  cruelty,  but  he  was  exacerbated 
by  her  unfair  onslaught  on  Robert,  and  he  was  sore 
at  the  attitude  taken  toward  him  by  his  family. 
Robert  had  done  his  best,  but  the  rest  were  im- 
placable; they  would  not  admit  his  right  to  his  own 
actions  independent  of  their  opinion.  Not  content 
with  holding  their  opinion,  they  communicated  it  to 
him  in  the  most  injurious  letters,  written  at  intervals 
most  nicely  calculated  for  his  annoyance.  To  a 
philosopher  in  search  of  tolerance  and  an  open  mind 
all  this  had  been  ruffling. 

The  quarrel  blew  over.  Matilda  dried  away  her 
tears,  and  he  begged  her  pardon  and  promised  to 
give  her  another  evening  dress  finer  even  than  that, 
made  at  a  real,  smart,  fashionable,  expensive  dress- 
maker's. .  .  .  Shyly  and  diffidently  they  entered  a 
famous  house  in  Albemarle  Street  and  were  told 
that  without  an  introduction  the  firm  could  not  make 
for  madam.  A  splendid  cocotte  in  glorious  raiment 
swept  by  them  and  out  into  the  street.  She  had  a 
little  spaniel  in  her  arms  and  a  silver-gray  motorcar 
was  awaiting  her.  Into  this  she  mounted  and  was 
whirled  away.  With  something  of  both  contempt 
and  envy  the  stately  young  woman  who  had  received 

214 


IN   THE    SWIM 

them  gazed  after  this  vision  of  wealth  and  insolence. 
Old  Mole  and  Matilda  felt  very  small  and  crept 
away. 

Old  Mole  said: 

"The  wealth  of  London  is  amazing.  A  man 
would  need  at  least  ten  thousand  a  year  to  amuse 
himself  with  a  woman  like  that." 

Matilda  said: 

"A  creature  like  that!" 

And  a  little  later  she  said: 

UI  think  I'll  wait  for  my  dress." 

However,  she  had  not  to  wait,  for  Old  Mole  gave 
the  story  to  Robert,  who,  with  a  nice  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things,  told  his  sister  that  he  wished  to 
buy  a  dress  for  a  friend  of  his,  and,  armed  with  her 
introduction,  he  and  Matilda  went  and  ordered  a 
gown  at  an  establishment  even  more  exclusive  than 
that  in  Albemarle  Street.  This  establishment  was 
so  select  that  only  the  most  indubitably  married  or 
otherwise  guaranteed  ladies  were  served;  one  there 
obtained  the  French  style  without  the  suspicion  of 
French  Frenchness. 

The  quarrel  blew  over,  but  the  sensibilities  of 
both  were  rasped,  and  they  were  cautious  and  wary 
with  one  another,  which  is  perhaps  the  greatest  trial 
of  the  blessed  state  of  matrimony.  He  labored  to 
be  just  to  her,  to  endeavor  to  understand  her.  She 
was,  he  confessed,  in  a  difficult  position,  lifted  above 
her  kind — though  it  was  inconceivable  that  she  could 
ever  have  met  the  fate  or  assumed  the  condition  of 
her  sister,  Mrs.  Boothroyd — and  not  adopted  into 

215 


OLD    MOLE 

his.  He  was  self-outlawed,  driven  out  of  the  com- 
mon mind  of  his  class,  and,  so  far  as  he  could  see, 
of  his  country,  into  his  own,  and  therein  he  had  as 
yet  discovered  no  habitation,  not  even  a  site  whereon 
to  build.  She  could  not  share  his  adventures  and 
sorrows,  and,  except  himself  and  Robert,  had  no 
companionship.  He  asked  her  if  she  had  no  ac- 
quaintance in  London,  and  she  confessed  to  the 
"second  girl,"  Milly  Dufresne.  He  proposed  that 
she  should  ask  Miss  Dufresne  to  dinner  to  provide 
the  occasion  for  the  wearing  of  her  new  gown.  She 
said  she  did  not  suppose  he  would  care  for  Miss 
Dufresne,  but  he  protested  that  her  friends  were  of 
course  his  and  he  was  only  too  delighted  that  she 
had  a  companion  of  her  own  sex  and  age. 

The  day  was  fixed  (her  birthday),  the  dinner 
ordered  and  arranged,  a  man  hired  for  the  evening 
to  do  the  waiting.  Without  a  word  being  said,  it 
was  assumed  that  there  should  be  the  ceremony  due 
to  the  necklace  and  the  French  (style)  gown. 

As  he  considered  all  these  preparations,  Old  Mole 
thought  amusedly  that  they  were  not  at  all  for  Miss 
Dufresne  and  Robert  (who  had  been  invited),  but 
rather  a  homage  paid  to  their  possessions,  and, 
searching  within  himself  for  the  causes  of  the  com- 
fort and  satisfaction  he  felt,  he  found  that  this  din- 
ner was  the  first  action  which  had  brought  them  into 
harmony  with  the  London  atmosphere.  Ethically 
there  was  nothing  to  be  said  for  such  a  pretence  at 
hospitality;  but  as  submission  to  the  aesthetic  pres- 
sure of  their  surroundings,  as  expedience,  it  was 

216 


IN   THE    SWIM 

quite  wonderfully  right.  It  was  the  thin  end  of  the 
wedge,  the  first  turn  of  the  gimlet  in  the  boring  of  the 
bunghole  of  the  fat  barrel  of  London  existence ;  and, 
if  it  were  their  fate  to  become  Londoners,  they  were 
setting  about  it  with  sufficient  adroitness.  He  was 
only  afraid  that  Miss  Dufresne  would  lead  him  back 
into  the  atmosphere  of  the  theater  from  which  he 
was  so  relieved  to  have  escaped.  The  theater  that 
he  had  known  was  only  an  excrescence  on  English 
life,  a  whelk  or  a  wen  on  its  reputable  bald  head. 
He  had  perched  on  it  like  a  fly,  but  his  concern,  his 
absorbing  concern,  was  to  get  at  the  brains  inside 
that  head  and  the  thoughts  inside  the  brain. 

On  the  morning  of  the  day  fixed  for  the  dinner 
Robert  wired  that  he  could  not  come,  and  Old  Mole 
was  left  with  the  awful  prospect  of  tackling  Miss 
Dufresne  alone.  His  recollection  of  her  was  of  a 
most  admirably  typical  minx  with  an  appetite  for 
admiration  and  flattery  that  had  consumed  all  her 
other  desires. 

"Lord  save  us!"  he  said.  "I  was  baffled  by  that 
type  as  a  young  man;  what  on  earth  can  I  do  with 
it  in  my  fifties?" 

And  in  his  heart  he  was  fearful  of  spoiling  Ma- 
tilda's pleasure.  This  dread  so  oppressed  him  that, 
finding  her  flurried  and  irritable  with  the  work  of 
preparation,  he  decided  to  absent  himself,  to  lunch  at 
Robert's  club,  of  which  he  had  just  been  elected  a 
member,  and  to  soothe  himself  with  a  walk  through 
Whitehall  and  the  parks  in  the  afternoon. 

As  he  walked — it  was  a  fine  spring  day  with  the 
217 


OLD   MOLE 

most  beautiful  changing  lights  and  a  sweet  breeze — 
he  congratulated  himself  on  the  wisdom  of  having 
come  to  London.  Marriage  might  be  difficult — 
there  was  no  warrant,  Scriptural  or  other,  for  ex- 
pecting it  to  be  easy — but  at  least  in  London  there 
was  interest.  There  was  not  the  unrelieved  sordid- 
ness  of  other  English  cities.  There  was  a  tradition, 
some  attempt  to  maintain  it,  graciousness,  a  kind  of 
dignity — it  might  be  the  dignity  of  a  roast  sirloin  of 
beef,  but  dignity  it  certainly  was — here  and  there 
traces  of  manners,  and  leisure  not  altogether 
swamped  by  luxury.  Coming  from  Thrigsby  was 
like  leaving  the  racket  of  the  factory  for  the  elegant 
shop  in  which  the  finished  articles  were  sold.  He 
liked  that  simile,  and  there  he  left  his  speculations 
concerning  London.  He  was  not  at  his  ease  in  this 
kind  of  thinking;  a  thought  was  only  valuable  to 
him  when  it  was  successfully  married  to  an  emotion 
to  produce  an  image.  For  London  he  could  find  no 
image,  and  when  he  thought  of  England  he  was 
taken  back  to  his  most  vivid  emotion,  that  when  in 
the  caravan  with  Copas  they  had  breasted  the  hill 
and  come  in  view  of  the  Pennine  Range :  but  this 
was  a  mere  emotion  mated  with  no  thought.  As  for 
the  Empire,  it  simply  had  no  significance.  It  was  a 
misnomer,  or  rather,  a  name  given  to  an  illusion,  or, 
at  best,  a  generalization.  It  was  certainly  not  an 
entity,  but  only  the  impossible  probability  of  a  uni- 
versally accepted  fiction.  He  could  not  accept  it, 
nor  could  he  accept  the  loose  terminology  of  the 
politicians.    For  this  reason  he  could  never  now  read 

ail 


IN   THE    SWIM 

the  newspapers  except  for  the  cricket  and  football 
news  in  which  his  interest  was  maintained  by  habit. 

Less  and  less  was  he  interested  in  things  and  ideas 
that  were  not  immediately  human,  and  therefore 
fluid  and  varying  in  form  and  color  as  clouds  and 
trees  in  the  wind  and  birds  in  the  air — and  human 
beings  on  the  earth.  Rigid  theory  and  fixed  concep- 
tions actually  hurt  him;  they  were  detached,  dead, 
like  windfall  fruit  rotting  on  the  ground,  and  every- 
where, in  books,  in  the  newspapers,  in  public 
speeches,  he  saw  them  gathered  up  and  stored,  be- 
cause it  was  too  much  trouble  to  take  the  ripe  fruit 
from  the  tree,  or  to  wait  for  the  hanging  fruit  to 
ripen,  or  because  (he  thought)  men  walk  with  their 
eyes  to  the  ground,  even  as  he  had  done,  and  see 
nothing  of  the  beauty  above  and  around  them.  And, 
thinking  so,  he  would  feel  an  impulse  to  arise  and 
shout  and  waken  men,  but  then,  regretfully,  he  would 
admit  that  he  was  too  old  to  surrender  to  this  im- 
pulse, and  would  think  too  much  before  he  spoke, 
and  would  end  by  prating  like  Gladstone  or  roaring 
like  Tom  Paine. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  the  character  of  London 
was  changed  or  changing.  He  delighted  especially 
in  the  young  men  and  women,  who  walked  with  a 
new  swagger,  almost  with  freedom,  and  adorned 
themselves  with  gay,  bold  colors.  The  young  women 
especially  were  limber  in  their  movements,  marvel- 
ously  adroit  in  dodging  their  hampering  garments. 
Their  bodies  were  freer.  They  had  not  the  tight, 
trussed  appearance  of  the  young  women  of  his  own 

219 


OLD    MOLE 

day  and  generation.  He  delighted  especially  in  the 
young  women  of  London.  They  gave  him  hope- 
fulness. 

He  was  pleased  to  see  that  the  young  men  de- 
lighted in  them,  also.  They  walked  with  their  arms 
in  the  arms  of  the  young  women  in  a  fine,  warm 
comradeship,  whereas,  in  his  day,  and  not  so  long 
ago  neither,  the  girls  had  placed  a  timid  little  hand 
in  the  arms  of  their  swains  and  been  towed  along  in 
a  sort  of  condescension.  It  pleased  him  to  see  the 
young  men  frankly,  and  in  spite  of  themselves  and 
their  dignity  and  breeding,  give  the  proper  involun- 
tary salute  to  passing  youth  and  beauty.  ...  As 
he  sat  in  St.  James's  Park  a  deliciously  pretty  girl 
passed  by  him,  and  she  repeated  nothing  of  the  full 
homage  he  paid  her,  but  then  came  a  tall  young  man, 
sober  and  stiff,  in  silk  hat  and  tail  coat.  They 
passed,  the  young  man  and  the  young  woman:  a 
lifting  of  the  shoulders  in  the  young  man,  a  tilt  of  the 
head  in  the  young  woman,  a  half-smile  of  pleasure, 
and  they  went  their  ways.  The  young  man  ap- 
proached Old  Mole.  He  gave  a  little  start  and  up 
went  his  hand  in  the  old  school  salute.  Old  Mole 
rose  to  his  feet. 

"My  dear  fellow.  .   .  ." 

It  was  A.  Z.  Panoukian. 

He  said: 

"Well,  sir " 

They  sat  down  together.  Panoukian  bore  the  old 
expression  which  had  always  overcast  his  face  when 
there  were  discoverable  laches  in  his  conduct,  and 

220 


IN   THE    SWIM 

Old  Mole  felt  himself  groping  for  the  mood  of 
jocular  severity  with  which  he  had  been  wont  to 
meet  that  expression. 

"Well,  sir,  I  never  thought " 

Old  Mole  found  the  formula : 

"Panoukian,  what  have  you  been  up  to?" 

"Well,  sir,  I'm  jolly  glad  to  have  met  you,  be- 
cause I  didn't  know  what  you  might  have  heard." 

"Pray,  Panoukian,  forget  that  I  was  ever  your 
schoolmaster.  I  am  no  longer  an  academic  person, 
though  there  are  distressing  traces  of  my  old  pro- 
fession in  my  outlook." 

Panoukian  had  heard  the  story,  and  a  grin  spread 
across  his  face.  That  made  things  easier.  He 
plumped  out  a  full  confession  and  personal  history. 

He  had  been  a  rank  failure  at  Oxford.  He  had 
no  one  but  himself  to  blame,  of  course.  Perhaps  he 
had  not  given  the  place  a  fair  trial,  but  at  the  end 
of  his  fourth  term  he  had  decided  that  it  was  no  use 
going  on,  and  removed  himself.  It  was  partly,  he 
thought,  that  he  could  not  endure  Tibster,  and 
partly  that  he  had  lost  all  power  of  concentrating 
on  his  work. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "but  at  school  there  was 
always  something  to  work  for,  to  get  to  Oxford. 
When  I  got  there  I  seemed  to  shoot  ahead  of  it,  to 
see  beyond  it,  and  in  the  place  itself  I  could  find 
nothing  but  Tibster  and  the  Tibsterian  mind,  cut  off 
from  the  world  outside  and  annoyed  because  that 
world  has  a  voluptuousness  which  is  not  in  its  own 
little  box.    I  think  I  changed  physically,  grew  a  new 

221 


OLD    MOLE 

kidney  or  another  lobe  of  the  brain.  Anyhow,  the 
world  shrank  and  I  became  very  large  and  un- 
wieldy, and  there  was  nothing  positive  in  my  exist- 
ence except  my  dislike  of  Tibster." 

"Did  you  smoke  a  great  deal?"  asked  Old  Mole. 

"Only  after  the  crisis." 

"Did  you  make  a  verse  translation  of  the  Odys- 
sey?" 

"Only  the  first  four  books." 

"I  imagine,  if  you  had  taken  your  symptoms  to 
Tibster,  he  would  have  put  you  right.  The  uni- 
versity has  that  effect  on  sensitive  undergraduates, 
especially  on  non-Public  School  men.  A  sudden 
growth,  a  swift  shooting  from  boyhood  into  the  be- 
ginnings of  manhood.  It  is  very  touching  to  watch; 
but  Tibster  must  have  seen  it  happen  so  often  that  it 
would  be  difficult  for  him  to  notice  that  it  was  hap- 
pening to  you  more  violently  than  usual." 

"I  never  thought  of  it  from  Tibster's  point  of 
view." 

"My  dear  Panoukian,  I  am  only  just  beginning 
to  see  your  affairs  from  your  point  of  view,  or,  in- 
deed, to  admit  that  you  have  a  point  of  view  at 
all.  ...  I  hope  it  was  not  a  great  disappointment 
to  your  father." 

Panoukian  said  his  father  had  died  during  his 
second  term.  He  had  been  attached  to  his  father 
and  was  with  him  at  the  end,  and  perhaps  that  was 
what  began  the  crisis.  The  business  had  gone  to  his 
brothers,  but  he  was  left  enough  to  live  on,  and  that 
was  how  he  came  to  be  in  London.     For  the  time 

222 


IN    THE    SWIM 

being  he  was  acting  as  secretary,  unpaid,  to  Tyler 
Harbottle,  M.  P.  for  North  Thrigsby  and  an  old 
friend  of  his  father's.  Old  Mole  remembered  Har- 
bottle, a  butter  merchant  in  Thrigsby  and  president 
of  the  Literary  Society,  the  Field  Society,  the  Lin- 
naean  Society,  the  Darwin  Club,  the  Old  Fogies,  and 
the  Ancient  Codgers,  and  formerly  a  member  of 
the  Art  Gallery  Committee,  and,  in  that  capacity, 
provocative  of  the  outcry  on  the  purchase  of  a  pic- 
ture by  so  advanced  and  startling  a  painter  as  Puvis 
de  Chavannes.  He  asked  Panoukian  how  he  liked 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  Panoukian  said  it  was 
full  of  Tibsters  with  soap  and  chemicals  and  money 
on  their  brains  instead  of  Greek  and  Latin  and 
book  philosophy. 

"Harbottle  is  a  Tibster,  with  a  little  nibbling 
mind,  picking  here  and  there,  not  because  he  is 
hungry,  but  because  he  is  afraid  some  one  else  will 
get  the  pieces  if  he  doesn't.  I  went  to  him  because 
I  wanted  to  work;  but  it  isn't  work,  it's  just  getting 
in  other  people's  way.  And  there  are  swarms  of 
Harbottles  in  the  House.  I  sometimes  think  that 
the  whole  of  politics  is  nothing  but  Harbottling.  It 
would  be  all  very  well  to  have  the  brake  hard  on  if 
the  country  were  going  to  Hell,  but  when  it  is  a  mat- 
ter of  a  long,  stiff  hill  it  is  heartrending." 

And  with  a  magnificent  gesture  he  swept  all  the 
Tibsters  and  Harbottles  away.  Old  Mole  found  his 
enthusiastic,  sweeping  condemnation  very  refresh- 
ing. There  was  youth  in  it,  and  he  was  beginning 
to  value  youth  above  all  things.    Above  wisdom  and 

223 


OLD    MOLE 

experience?     At  least  above  the  caution  of  inex- 
perience. 

Clearly  Panoukian  was  prepared  to  go  on  talking, 
to  leave  Harbottle  to  go  on  nibbling  without  his  aid, 
but  Old  Mole  had  begun  to  feel  a  chill,  and  rose  to 
go.  Panoukian  was  also  going  toward  the  India 
Office — Harbottle  was  corresponding  with  the  Sec- 
retary about  two  Parsees  who  had  been  refused  their 
right  of  appeal  to  the  Privy  Council — and  so  far 
they  went  together.  As  they  parted  Old  Mole  re- 
membered Matilda's  dinner  party  and  Miss  Du- 
fresne.  Panoukian  seemed  an  excellent  buffer.  He 
invited  him,  and  from  the  eagerness  with  which  the 
invitation  was  accepted  he  surmised  that  Panoukian 
was  rather  lonely  in  London.  Then  he  felt  glad 
that  he  had  asked  him. 

The  party  was  very  successful.  Matilda  was 
delighted  to  have  another  male,  and  that  a  young 
one,  to  admire  her  fine  feathers,  and  Panoukian  was 
obviously  flattered  and  deliciously  alarmed  to  meet 
a  real  live  actress  who  confirmed  him  in  his  super- 
stitious notions  of  the  morals  of  the  stage  by  flirting 
with  him  at  sight.  He  was  not  very  skilful  in  his 
response,  but  a  very  little  subjugation  was  enough 
to  satisfy  Miss  Dufresne :  she  only  needed  to  know 
that  she  could  an  she  would.  He  was  very  shy,  and, 
with  him,  shyness  ran  to  talkativeness.  With  Ma- 
tilda he  was  like  a  schoolboy;  his  attitude  toward 
her  was  a  softening  and  rounding  with  chivalry  of 
his  attitude  toward  Old  Mole.     He  hardly  ever 

224 


IN   THE    SWIM 

spoke  to  her  without  calling  her  Mrs.  Beenham: 
"Yes,  Mrs.  Beenham" — "Don't  you  think  so,  Mrs. 
Beenham  ?" — "As  I  was  saying  to  your  husband, 
Mrs.  Beenham.  .  .  ."  When  he  left  he  summoned 
up  courage  to  ask  Old  Mole  if  he  would  bring  Mrs. 
Beenham  to  tea  with  him.  He  lived  in  the  Temple 
and  had  a  wonderful  view  of  St.  Paul's  and  the 
river.  Old  Mole  promised  he  would  do  so,  and 
asked  him  to  come  in  whenever  he  liked. 

"It's  awfully  good  of  you,"  said  Panoukian,  and 
with  that  he  went  off  with  Miss  Dufresne,  who  had 
engaged  him  to  see  her  into  a  taxi.  Matilda  stood 
at  the  head  of  the  stairs  and  watched  them  go 
down. 

"Good  night,  dearie,"  called  Miss  Dufresne,  and 
Panoukian,  looking  up,  saw  Matilda  bending  over. 

"Good  night,  Mrs.  Beenham,"  he  cried. 

Matilda,  returning  to  the  study,  said: 

"What  a  nice  voice  that  boy  has  got." 

"I  used  to  expect  great  things  of  Panoukian," 
said  Old  Mole,  "but  then  neither  he  nor  I  had  seen 
beyond  Oxford." 

"Is  he  very  clever?" 

"He  used  to  have  the  sort  of  cleverness  school- 
masters like.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  he  has 
the  sort  of  cleverness  the  world  needs.  He  is  very 
young." 

"Not  so  very  young." 

"Like  your  party?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"You  looked  very  pretty." 
225 


OLD    MOLE 

"Thank  you,  sir." 

"Good  girl.    What  about  bed?" 

But  she  was  loth  to  move.  She  began  several 
topics,  but  soon  dropped  them.    At  last  she  plunged  : 

"Millie's  going  into  a  new  piece.  It's  a  real  play 
this  time.  It's  about  the  stage  and  there  are  to  be 
a  lot  of  chorus  girls  in  it.  She  says  she  could  get 
me  in  easily." 

Old  Mole  took  this  in  silence. 

"I  won't  go  if  you  don't  like  it,"  she  said. 

"Have  you  said  you  would  go?" 

"Yes,  yes." 

"Do  you  want  to?" 

"What  else  is  there  for  me  to  do?" 

Indeed,  what  was  there?  He  was  saddened  and 
angry  at  the  use  of  the  argument.  He  had  wanted 
her  to  feel  free,  to  come  and  to  go,  so  long  only  as 
she  treated  him  with  frankness,  and  here  he  had  so 
far  failed  that  she  had  made  arrangements  to  re- 
turn to  the  theater  and  then  asked  for  his  post  facto 
consent.  What  was  it  that  kept  her  in  awe  of  him? 
Not  his  thoughts  of  her,  nor  his  feeling  for  her,  so 
far  as  he  knew  either.  .  .  .  He  kissed  her  good 
night  and  sat  sadly  brooding  over  it  all :  but  it  was 
too  difficult  for  him,  and  he  was  tired  and  his  humor 
would  not  come  to  his  aid.  He  sought  refuge  in 
books,  but  they  yielded  him  none,  and  at  last 
Panoukian's  phrase  recurred  to  him : 

"Perhaps,"  he  said,  "perhaps  I  am  a  Harbottler 
in  marriage,  nibbling  at  love.  God  help  me  if  I 
am, 

2Z6 


IN   THE    SWIM 

He  thought  surely  he  had  reached  the  worst. 
But  Fate  is  inexhaustibly  ingenious.  He  was  to  have 
his  bellyful  of  Harbottling. 

Among  his  letters  on  the  morning  after  the  party 
he  found  one,  the  envelope  of  which  bore  in  print 
the  name  of  Langley  Brown,  Literary  and  Dramatic 
Agent,  9  Coventry  Street,  W.  This  letter  informed 
him  that  Mr.  Henry  Butcher,  of  the  Pall  Mall 
Theater,  proposed  to  immediately  produce — (the 
split  infinitive  is  Mr.  Langley  Brown's) — a  play 
called  "Lossie  Loses,"  by  Carlton  Timmis,  the 
rights  of  which  Mr.  Brown  believe  to  be  in  Mr. 
Beenham's  hands.  And  would  Mr.  Beenham  call  on 
Mr.  Brown,  or,  if  not,  write  to  give  his  consent, 
when  the  contract  would  be  drawn  up  and  the  play 
produced. 

He  had  almost  forgotten  Carlton  Timmis.  The 
letter  had  been  forwarded  through  his  banker.  He 
stared  at  it,  turned  it  over  and  over,  read  it  again. 
It  seemed  to  be  an  authentic  document.  He  handed 
it  to  Matilda.    She  said  with  awe : 

"Mr.  Butcher!" 

And,  with  unconscious  imitation  of  the  humor  of 
the  English  Bench,  Old  Mole  asked: 

"Who  is  Mr.  Butcher?" 

This  was  shocking  ignorance.  For  twenty  years 
and  more  Mr.  Henry  Butcher's  name  had  been  in 
the  newspapers,  on  the  hoardings,  and  his  portrait, 
his  wife's  portrait,  his  baby's  portrait,  his  dog's  por- 

227 


OLD    MOLE 

trait,  his  horse's  portrait  had  appeared  in  the  maga- 
zines, and  his  commendation  of  a  certain  brand  of 
cigarette  had  for  the  last  ten  years  been  used  by 
the  makers  as  an  advertisement.  For  all  that,  his 
name  and  personality  had  not  penetrated  Old  Mole's 
consciousness. 

"Did  you  buy  the  play?"  asked  Matilda. 

"I  lent  him  fifty  pounds,  and  he  left  it  with  me. 
I  had  no  very  clear  idea  as  to  his  intention." 

uIs  it  a  good  play?" 

"You  shall  read  it." 

He  unearthed  it  with  some  difficulty  and  gave  it 
to  her.    She  read  it  and  wept  over  it. 

"Is  it  a  good  play?"  he  asked. 

"I  don't  know,  but  it's  a  lovely  part." 

He  went  to  see  Mr.  Brown,  a  flashy  little  Cockney 
who  peppered  him  with  illustrious  literary  names 
and  talked  about  everything  but  the  business  in  hand. 
Old  Mole  asked  where  Timmis  might  be,  and  Mr. 
Brown  said  he  had  heard  from  him  only  once,  and 
that  from  a  place  called  Crown  Imperial,  in  British 
Columbia. 

"A  good  fellow,  Timmis,  but  cracked.  Impa- 
tient, you  know.  I  never  can  make  young  writers 
see  that  they've  got  to  wait  until  the  old  birds  drop 
off  the  perch  before  their  masterpieces  can  come 
home  to  roost." 

"Is  'Lossie  Loses'  a  masterpiece?"  asked  Old 
Mole  innocently. 

"Between  ourselves,"  replied  the  agent,  "I  don't 
228 


IN    THE    SWIM 

think  there's  much  in  it.  But  Mr.  Butcher  has  been 
having  a  lean  period  lately  and  wanted  something 
cheap,  and  thought  he'd  try  a  new  author."  , 

He  produced  the  contract.  Old  Mole  read  it 
through  in  a  sort  of  dream  and  signed  it.  He  was 
shown  out  with  a  hearty  handshake,  and  that  very 
evening  he  received  from  Mr.  Brown  a  check  for 
ninety  pounds — a  hundred  in  advance  of  royalties 
less  10  per  cent,  commission.  He  was  disconcerted. 
There  was  some  uncanny  wizardry  in  it  that,  by 
merely  walking  into  an  office  and  signing  a  paper, 
one  could  at  the  end  of  the  day  be  the  richer  by 
ninety  pounds  with  never  a  stroke  of  work  done 
for  it.  His  first  impulse  was  to  give  the  check  to 
Matilda,  but,  on  reflection,  he  decided  to  give  her 
forty  and  to  keep  the  fifty  for  Timmis  if  he  could 
be  found.  He  looked  up  Crown  Imperial,  British 
Columbia,  on  the  map  and  in  the  gazetteer,  but  there 
was  no  mention  of  it,  and,  concluding  that  it  must 
be  a  new  place,  he  wrote  to  Timmis  there  in  the 
hope  of  catching  him.  When  he  had  posted  his 
letter  he  remembered  that  Timmis  might  have 
dropped  his  stage  name,  and  wrote  another  letter  to 
Cuthbert  Jones.  Then  he  brushed  the  play  from 
his  mind. 

Within  a  fortnight  it  was  impossible  to  walk  along 
any  of  the  main  thoroughfares  of  London  without 
seeing  the  words  "Lossie  Loses,"  with  the  name  of 
Mr.  Henry  Butcher  in  enormous  letters,  and  the 
name  of  Carlton  Timmis  in  very  small  print. 

229 


OLD    MOLE 

For  the  first  night  Old  Mole  received,  with  Mr. 
Butcher's  compliments,  a  ticket  for  Box  B.  Panou- 
kian  and  Robert  came  to  dinner.  Matilda  wore 
her  first  evening  dress  and  the  opera  cloak,  a  red 
ribbon  in  her  hair,  and  graced  the  front  of  the  box 
with  the  three  men  behind  her. 

There  is  a  certain  manner  appropriate  to  a  seat  in 
the  front  of  a  box — a  consciousness  that  is  not  quite 
self-consciousness,  a  certain  setting  back  of  the  shoul- 
ders, a  lifting  of  the  head,  a  sort  of  shy  brazenness, 
an  acceptance  of  being  part  of  the  show,  and,  for 
all  the  pit  knows,  a  duchess.  Matilda  had  caught  it 
to  perfection  and  turned  a  dignified  profile  to  the 
opera  glasses  directed  upon  her.  Panoukian  pointed 
out  the  political  personages  in  the  stalls,  and,  being 
a  great  reader  of  those  glossy  photographic  papers, 
which  are  perhaps  the  most  typical  product  of  the 
time,  was  able  to  recognize  many  of  the  literary  and 
artistic  celebrities  of  the  moment.  Actresses  glided 
fussily  to  their  seats,  smiling  acknowledgment  to 
the  applause  of  the  groundlings.  There  was  a  bob- 
bing up  and  down,  a  bowing  and  a  smiling,  a  waving 
of  programs  and  fans  from  acquaintance  to  ac- 
quaintance, a  chatter  and  hum  of  many  voices  that 
drowned  the  jigging  overture,  and  went  droning  on 
into  the  first  few  moments  of  the  play. 

Old  Mole's  memory  of  it  was  hazy,  but  suffi- 
ciently alive  to  quarrel  with  some  of  the  impressions 
he  now  had  of  it  and  to  enable  him  to  distinguish 
between  the  work  of  the  actors  and  the  work  of  the 
author.     The  play  was  worse  and  better  than  he 

230 


IN   THE    SWIM 

had  thought.  In  his  recollection  it  was  not  so  en- 
tirely unscrupulous  in  its  appeal  to  the  surface  emo- 
tions, nor  so  extraordinarily  adroit  in  sliding  off 
into  a  dry,  sly  and  perfectly  irrelevant  humor  just 
at  the  moment  when  those  base  appeals  looked  as 
though  they  were  going  to  be  pushed  so  far  as  to 
offend  even  the  thickest  sensibilities.  Each  curtain 
was  brought  down  with  a  neat,  wistful  little  joke, 
except  at  the  end  of  the  third  act,  when,  in  silence, 
Lossie,  the  little  unloved  heroine  of  the  play,  pre- 
pared to  cook  the  supper  for  the  husband  who  had 
just  left  her.  In  the  fourth  act  he  came  back  and 
ate  it,  so  that  all  ended  happily.  The  atmosphere 
was  Lancashire,  and  the  actors  spoke  Scots,  Irish, 
Belfast,  Somerset,  and  Wigan,  but  that  did  not 
seem  to  matter.  The  actress  who  played  Lossie 
spoke  with  a  very  good  Thrigsby  accent,  and  her 
performance  was  full  of  charm.  She  had  a  fine 
voice  and  knew  how  to  use  it,  and  her  awkwardness 
of  gesture  suited  the  uncouthness  with  which  the 
Lancashire  folk  were  endowed.  She  and  the  sad 
little  jokes  carried  all  before  them,  and  there  was 
tremendous  applause  at  the  end  of  each  act  and  the 
close  of  the  play. 

Mr.  Henry  Butcher  made  a  grateful  little  speech, 
and,  looking  toward  Old  Mole's  box,  said  the  au- 
thor was  not  in  the  house.  All  eyes  were  turned 
toward  the  box,  and  the  shouting  was  renewed. 

Entirely  unconscious  of  the  attention  and  interest 
they  were  arousing,  the  party  escaped.  Robert  was 
hungry  and  insisted  on  having  oysters.    As  they  ate 

231 


OLD    MOLE 

them  they  discussed  the  play.  Robert  and  Matilda 
were  enthusiastic,  Old  Mole  was  dubious  and  de- 
pressed, and  Panoukian  contemptuous. 

"I've  seen  worse,"  he  said,  "but  nothing  with 
quite  so  much  effrontery.  It  was  like  having  your 
face  dabbed  with  a  baby's  powder  puff.  I  felt  all 
the  time  that  in  a  moment  they  would  have  a  child 
saying  its  prayers  on  the  stage.  But  they  never  did, 
and  there  was  extraordinary  pleasure  in  the  con- 
tinual dread  of  it,  and  the  continual  sense  of  relief. 
And  every  now  and  then  they  made  one  laugh.  I 
believe  it  will  succeed." 

It  succeeded.  The  critics  unanimously  agreed  that 
the  new  play  had  charm,  and,  said  one  of  them:  "It 
is  with  plays,  as  with  women;  if  they  have  charm, 
you  need  look  no  further.  All  London  will  be  at 
Lossie's  feet." 

At  the  end  of  the  first  week  Old  Mole  received  a 
check  for  one  hundred  and  ten  pounds;  at  the  end 
of  the  second  a  check  for  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five.  He  sent  two  cablegrams  to  Carlton  Timmis 
and  Cuthbert  Jones  at  Crown  Imperial,  British  Col- 
umbia. No  answer.  Timmis  (or  Jones)  had  dis- 
appeared. 

Money  poured  in. 

The  play  was  bought  by  cable  for  America,  and 
five  hundred  pounds  passed  into  Old  Mole's  ac- 
count. It  became  almost  a  horror  to  him  to  open 
his  letters  lest  they  should  contain  a  check. 

Worst  of  all,  the  newspapers  scented  "copy."  A 
232 


IN   THE    SWIM 

successful  play,  a  vanished  author,  no  one  to  claim 
the  fame  and  fortune  lying  there.  One  paper  un- 
dertook to  find  Carlton  Timmis.  It  published  pho- 
tographs of  him,  scraps  of  biography  and  anec- 
dotes, but  Timmis  remained  hidden,  and  the  news- 
papers yelled,  in  effect,  "Where  is  Timmis?  The 
public  wants  Timmis.  Wireless  has  tracked  a  mur- 
derer to  his  doom,  surely  it  cannot  fail  to  reveal  the 
whereabouts  of  the  public's  new  darling ?"  Another 
journal  found  its  way  to  the  heart  (i.e.,  the  box 
office)  of  the  theater  and  asked  in  headlines,  "Is 
Butcher  Paying  Royalties?"  Butcher  wrote  to  say 
that  he  was  paying  royalties  to  the  owner  of  the 
play,  whose  name  was  not  Carlton  Timmis.  And 
at  last  a  third  newspaper  announced  the  name  of 
the  beneficiary  of  the  play — H.  J.  Beenham.  Gray's 
Inn  was  besieged.  Old  Mole  was  in  despair  and 
declared  that  they  would  have  to  pack  up  and  go 
away  until  the  uproar  had  died  down,  but,  more 
sensibly,  Matilda  invited  a  journalist  in,  gave  him  a 
drink,  and  told  him  the  little  there  was  to  tell.  The 
next  check  was  for  a  hundred  and  eighty  pounds. 

Money  poured  in. 

Five  companies  were  sent  out  with  "Lossie  Loses" 
in  America,  three  in  England,  and  the  play  was 
given  in  Australia  and  South  Africa.  It  was  also 
published.  Money  poured  in.  It  came  in  tens,  in 
hundreds,  in  thousands  of  pounds.  It  became  a 
purely  automatic  process,  and  Old  Mole  quickly  lost 
interest  in  it  and  ceased  to  think  about  it.  He  told 
himself  that  it  would  soon  come  to  an  end,  that  such 

233 


OLD    MOLE 

a  violent  eruption  of  gold  could  not  last  very  long, 
and  his  attention  was  engrossed  by  its  effects. 

In  his  own  mind  it  had  brought  about  no  moral 
crisis  like  that  of  his  first  catastrophe,  but,  insen- 
sibly, it  had  altered  his  point  of  view,  given  him  a 
sense  of  security  that  was  almost  paralyzing  in  its 
comfort.  All  his  old  thoughts  had  been  in  self- 
protection  against  the  people  with  whom  he  had 
come  in  contact,  people  to  whom  he  was  a  stranger, 
different  from  themselves,  and  therefore  suspect. 
But  now  in  London  when  he  met  new  people  they 
bowed  before  him,  put  themselves  out  to  ingratiate 
him,  almost,  it  seemed,  though  he  hated  to  think  so, 
to  placate  him.  His  name  was  known.  He  was 
Mr.  Beenham,  and  was  somehow  responsible  for 
"Lossie  Loses,"  which  everybody  had  seen  and  the 
public  so  loved  that  three  matinees  a  week  were 
necessary,  and  there  were  beginning  to  be  Lossie 
collars  and  Lossie  hats  and  Lossie  muffs  and  Lossie 
biscuits  and  Lossie  corsets.  .  .  .  And  his  sister 
had  called  on  Matilda  and  removed  that  source  of 
bitterness.  And  at  the  club  men  sought  his  ac- 
quaintance. He  had  letters  from  more  than  one  of 
his  old  colleagues  at  Thrigsby  and  several  of  his 
former  pupils  sought  him  out.  A  few  of  them  were 
distinguished  men — a  doctor,  a  barrister,  a  journal- 
ist, the  editor  of  a  weekly  literary  review.  They 
invited  him  to  their  houses,  and  he  was  delighted 
with  the  ease  and  grace  with  which  Matilda  bore 
herself  and  was  more  than  a  match  for  their  wives, 
and  became  friendly  with  one  or  two  of  them.    They 

234 


IN    THE    SWIM 

moved  among  people  whose  lives  were  easy  and 
smooth-running  in  roomy,  solidly  furnished  houses, 
all  very  much  like  each  other  in  style  and  taste.  The 
people  they  met  at  these  houses  in  South  Kensing- 
ton and  Hampstead  were  almost  monotonously  alike. 
At  the  doctor's  house  they  met  doctors,  at  the  bar- 
rister's solicitors  and  more  barristers,  at  the  editor's 
journalists  and  writers.  They  were  different  only  in 
their  professions:  those  apart,  they  were  as  alike 
as  fossil  ammonites  in  different  strata:  and  they 
all  "loved"  uLossie  Loses."  The  women  were 
very  kind  to  Matilda  and  invited  her  to  their  tea 
parties  and  "hen"  luncheons.  She  read  the  books 
they  read  and  began  to  have  "views"  and  opinions, 
and  to  know  the  names  of  the  twentieth  century 
poets;  she  picked  up  a  smattering  of  the  jargon  of 
painting  and  music  just  as  she  caught  the  trick  of 
being  smart  in  her  dress,  and  for  the  same  reason, 
because  the  other  women  had  "views"  and  opinions 
and  talked  of  music  and  painting  and  were  smart  in 
their  dress.  The  eruption  of  gold  into  their  lives 
had  blown  her  desire  to  return  to  the  theater  into 
the  air.  She  was  fully  occupied  with  dressing,  buy- 
ing clothes,  ever  more  clothes,  and  arranging  for 
the  hospitality  they  received  and  gave. 

Her  husband  was  amazed  at  the  change  in  her. 
It  was  as  startling  as  the  swift  growth  of  a  flounder- 
ing puppy  into  a  recognizable  dog.  It  was  not 
merely  a  matter  of  pinning  on  clothes  and  opinions 
and  a  set  of  fashionable  ideas:  there  was  real 
growth  in  the  woman  which  enabled  her  to  wear 

*3S 


OLD    MOLE 

these  gewgaws  with  ease  and  grace  so  that  they 
became  her  and  were  an  ornament,  absurd  it  is  true, 
but  so  generally  worn — though  rarely  with  such 
tact — that  their  preposterousness  was  never  noticed 
in  the  crowd.  She  was  gayer  and  easier,  and  she 
seemed  to  have  lost  the  tug  and  strain  at  her  heart. 
Often  in  the  daytime  she  was  dull  and  listless,  but 
she  never  failed  to  draw  upon  some  mysterious  re- 
serve of  vitality  for  the  evening. 

He  was  sometimes  alarmed  when  he  watched  the 
other  women  who  had  not  her  freshness,  and  saw 
how  some  of  them  had  ceased  to  be  anything  but 
views  and  opinions  and  clothes.  But  he  told  him- 
self that  she  was  not  tied,  as  the  rest  were,  by  their 
husband's  professions,  to  London,  and  that  they 
could  always  go  away  when  they  were  tired  of 
it.  .  .  .  He  was  often  bored  and  exhausted,  but 
he  put  up  with  it  all,  partly  because  of  the  pleasure 
she  was  finding  in  that  society,  and  partly  because 
he  felt  that  he  was  getting  nearer  that  indeterminate 
but  magnetically  irresistible  goal  which  had  been  set 
before  him  on — when  was  it? — on  the  night  when 
his  thoughts  had  taken  form  and  life  and  he  had 
been  launched  into  that  waking  dreamland.  With 
that,  even  the  most  violent  happenings  seemed  to 
have  very  little  to  do;  they  were  almost  purely  ex- 
ternal. One  might  have  a  startling  adventure  every 
day,  and  be  no  nearer  the  goal.  One  might  have  so 
many  adventures  that  his  capacity  to  enjoy  them 
would  be  exhausted.  There  was,  he  felt  sure,  as  he 
pondered  the  existence  of  these  professional  people 

236 


IN   THE    SWIM 

and  saw  how  many  of  them  were  jaded  by  habit,  but 
were  carried  on  by  the  impetus  of  the  habits  of 
their  kind,  so  that  they  were  forever  seeking  to 
crowd  into  their  days  and  nights  far  more  people, 
thoughts,  ideas,  books,  aesthetic  emotions  than  they 
would  hold — there  was  somewhere  in  experience  a 
point  at  which  living  overflowed  into  life  and  was 
therein  justified.  So  much  seemed  clear,  and  it  was 
that  point  that  he  was  seeking.  In  his  relationship 
with  Matilda,  in  his  love  for  her,  he  had  striven  to 
force  his  way  to  it.  The  violence  of  his  meeting 
with  her,  the  brutality  of  his  breach  with  his  old 
existence,  had,  by  reflex  action,  led  him  to  violence 
and  brutality  even  in  his  kindness,  even  in  his  at- 
tempted sympathy. 

That  seemed  sound  reasoning,  and  it  led  him  to 
the  knowledge  that  Matilda  had  plunged  into  the 
life  of  the  professional  people  with  its  round  of 
pleasures  and  functions,  its  absorption  in  tailors  and 
mummers  and  the  amusers  of  the  people,  its  entire 
devotion  to  amusement,  as  a  protection  against  him- 
self. It  was  an  unpleasant  realization,  but  amid  so 
much  pleasantness  it  was  bracing. 

Money  poured  in.  "Lossie  Loses"  was  visited  by 
all  the  Royal  Family.  When  it  had  been  performed 
two  hundred  and  fifty  times  the  Birthday  Honors 
list  was  published  and  Henry  Butcher  was  ac- 
claimed "our  latest  theatrical  knight."  He  gave  a 
supper  party  on  the  stage  to  celebrate  the  two  occa- 
sions; and  he  invited  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Beenham. 

237 


OLD   MOLE 

There  were  present  the  Solicitor-General,  Mr. 
Justice  Sloppy,  the  three  celebrated  daughters  of 
two  dukes,  the  daughters-in-law  of  three  Cabinet 
Ministers,  a  millionaire,  two  novelists,  five  "abso- 
lutely established"  dramatists,  three  dramatic  crit- 
ics, nine  theatrical  knights,  the  ten  most  beautiful 
women  in  London,  the  Keeper  of  the  Coptic  Section 
of  the  South  Kensington  Museum,  Tipton  Mudde, 
the  aviator,  and  Archdeacon  Froude,  the  Chaplain 
of  the  Actors'  Union.  There  were  others  who  were 
neither  named  nor  catalogued  in  the  newspaper 
(Court  and  Society)  next  day.  As  Mr.  Justice 
Sloppy  said,  in  the  speech  of  the  evening:  "For 
brains  and  beauty  he  had  never  seen  anything  like 
it.  .  .  ."  The  toasts  were  the  King,  Sir  Henry 
Butcher,  Lossie,  and  the  Public,  and  there,  as  Panou- 
kian  remarked  when  the  feast  was  described  to  him, 
you  have  the  whole  thing  in  a  nutshell,  the  topnotch 
of  English  philosophy,  the  expression  of  the  English 
ideal,  lots  of  food,  lots  of  drink,  lots  of  talk,  of 
money,  of  people,  and  then  a  swollen  gratitude — 
"God  bless  us  every  one."  And  Panoukian  then  de- 
veloped a  theory  that  England,  the  English  charac- 
ter, had  reached  its  zenith  and  come  to  flower  and 
fruit  in  the  genius  of  Charles  Dickens.  Thereafter 
was  nothing  but  the  fading  of  leaves,  the  falling  of 
leaves,  the  drowsing  into  hibernation.  He  was  ex- 
cited by  the  idea  of  falling  leaves  to  describe  the 
intellectual  and  moral  activity  of  the  country.  It 
would  seem  to  explain  the  extraordinary  predomi- 
nance of  the  Harbottles,  who  were  so  thick  upon 

238 


IN   THE    SWIM 

every  English  institution  that  Vallombrosa  was  noth- 
ing to  it. 

Old  Mole  met  Tyler  Harbottle  again,  and,  allow- 
ing for  Panoukian's  youthful  exaggeration,  had  to 
admit  the  justice  of  his  estimate.  Harbottle  was 
very  like  a  falling  leaf,  blown  hither  and  thither 
upon  every  gust  of  wind,  dropping,  skimming,  spin- 
ning in  the  air,  but  all  the  time  obeying  only  one 
impulse,  the  law  of  gravity,  which  sent  him  down  to 
the  level  of  the  ground,  the  public.  Seeing  nothing 
but  the  public,  nothing  beyond  it,  hoping  for  nothing 
but  a  comfortable  resting  place  when  at  last  he  came 
to  earth,  Harbottle  was  under  the  illusion  that  the 
winds  that  tossed  him  came  from  the  public,  and 
when  they  blew  him  one  way  he  said,  "I  will  go  that 
way,"  and  when  they  blew  him  another  he  said,  "I 
will  go  this."  He  was  a  Unionist  Free  Trader  in 
theory  and  by  label:  in  practice  he  was  an  inde- 
fatigable wirepuller.  By  himself  he  was  unimpor- 
tant, but  there  were  so  many  of  him  and  his  kind 
that  he  had  to  be  placated. 

Old  Mole  met  all  the  Harbottles.  After  Sir  Henry 
Butcher's  party  he  and  Matilda  were  squeezed  up 
into  a  higher  stratum  of  society.  Tipton  Mudde 
took  Matilda  up  in  his  monoplane  and  thereafter 
their  whole  existence  grew  wings  and  flew.  They 
now  met  the  people  of  whom  their  professional  ac- 
quaintances had  talked.  The  triumph  of  "Lossie 
Loses"  continued:  it  was  said  the  play  would  beat 
the  record  of  "Our  Boys."  Money  poured  in,  and 
almost  as  bewildering  was  the  number  of  invita- 

239 


OLD    MOLE 

tions — to  vast  dinner  parties,  to  at  homes,  to  draw- 
ing-room meetings,  to  boxes  at  the  Opera,  to  lunch- 
eons at  the  luxurious  hotels,  to  balls,  to  political 
receptions,*  to  banquets  given  to  celebrate  honors 
won  or  to  mark  the  end  of  a  political  campaign,  or 
to  welcome  an  actor-manager  home  from  Australia. 
Whenever  a  Harbottle  pulled  out  a  plum  from  the 
pie  than  the  subtler  Harbottles  buzzed  like  flies 
around  it  and  arranged  to  eat  and  drink  and  make 
merry  or  at  least  to  make  speeches. 

For  a  time  it  was  very  good  fun.  Old  Mole  and 
Matilda  did  as  the  Harbottles  did.  They  had  so 
many  engagements  that  they  were  compelled  to  buy 
a  motorcar  and  to  engage  a  chauffeur.  Without  it 
Matilda  could  never  have  found  time  to  buy  her 
clothes.  She  went  to  the  dressmaker  patronized  by 
all  the  female  Harbottles,  but  the  dressmaker  made 
for  an  old-fashioned  duchess,  who  adhered  to  the 
figure  of  the  nineties  and  refused  to  be  straight- 
fronted.  The  female  Harbottles  fled  from  this 
horrid  retrogression  and  made  the  fortune  of  an 
obscure  little  man  in  Chelsea. 

It  was  good  fun  for  a  time,  and  Old  Mole  was 
really  interested.  Here  on  the  top  of  English  life, 
its  head  and  front — for  the  great-leisured  govern- 
ing classes  no  longer  governed;  they  had  feudal  pos- 
sessions but  not  the  feudal  political  power — was  a 
little  world  whizzing  like  a  zoetrope.  You  might 
peep  through  the  chinks  and  the  figures  inside  it 
would  seem  to  be  alive,  but  when  you  were  inside  it 
there  were  just  a  number  of  repetitions  of  the  same 

240 


IN    THE    SWIM 

figures  in  poses  disintegrated  from  movement.  The 
machine  whizzed  round,  but  what  was  the  force  that 
moved  it?  Impossible  to  enter  it  except  by  energy 
or  some  fluke  that  made  you  rich  enough  or  famous 
enough  for  there  to  be  flattery  in  your  acquaintance. 
True,  Old  Mole  only  saw  the  figures  inside  the  ma- 
chine arranged  for  pleasure.  They  were  workers, 
too,  but  their  pleasure  was  a  part  of  their  work. 
Lawyers  who  were  working  eighteen  hours  a  day 
could  find  time  to  visit  three  great  entertainments 
in  an  evening;  politicians  after  an  all-night  sitting  in 
the  House  could  dine  out,  see  two  acts  of  the  Opera, 
or  the  ballet,  or  an  hour  or  so  of  a  revue,  and  then 
return  to  the  division  Lobbies;  actors,  after  two  per- 
formances in  the  day,  could  come  on  to  a  reception 
at  midnight  and  eat  caviare  and  drink  champagne. 
There  were  very  few  of  whom  it  could  be  said  that 
the  rout  was  the  breath  of  their  nostrils;  but  all 
continued  in  it,  all  accepted  it  as  a  normal  condition 
of  things,  as  the  proper  expression  of  the  nation's 
finest  energies.  Impossible  to  avoid  it,  furtherance 
of  ambition  and  young  devotion  to  an  ideal  both  led 
to  it.  .  .  .  Pitchforked  into  it  so  suddenly,  with  so 
many  vivid  impressions  after  wanderings,  Old  Mole 
felt  how  completely  it  was  cut  off  from  the  life  of  the 
country,  because  from  the  inside  and  the  outside  of 
the  machine  things  looked  so  entirely  different.  He 
had  to  go  no  further  than  his  own  case.  On  all 
hands  he  heard  it  said  so  often  that  "Lossie  Loses" 
was  a  wonderful  play — "so  delicate,  so  fanciful,  so 
full   of   the    poetry   of   common   things" — that    it 

241 


OLD    MOLE 

needed  only  a  very  little  weakening  of  his  critical 
faculty  for  him  to  begin  to  believe  it  and  greedily 
to  accept  the  position  it  had  given  him.  As  it  was, 
knowing  its  intrinsic  falsehood  and  baseness,  he 
marveled  that  people  of  so  much  intelligence  could 
be  bemused  by  success  into  such  jockeying  of  their 
standards.  But  he  began  to  perceive  that  there  were 
no  standards,  neither  of  life  nor  of  art.  There 
could  not  be,  for  there  was  no  time  for  valuation, 
just  as  there  was  no  time  for  thinking.  Here  and 
there  he  found  an  ideal  or  two,  but  such  wee,  worn, 
weary  little  things,  so  long  bandied  about  among 
brains  that  could  not  understand  them  and  worried 
into  a  decline  by  the  shoddy  rhetorical  company  they 
had  been  forced  to  keep.  Arguing  from  his  own 
case,  Old  Mole  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  whole 
whirligig  had  come  about  from  a  constant  succes- 
sion of  decent  ordinary  mortals  having  been,  like 
himself,  the  victims  of  an  eruption  of  gold  which  had 
carried  them,  without  sufficient  struggle  or  testing  of 
imagination  or  moral  quality,  to  an  eminence  above 
their  fellows,  upon  which,  in  their  bewilderment, 
they  were  conscious  of  nothing  but  a  dread  of  fall- 
ing down.  In  that  dread,  sharing  no  other  emotion, 
they  clung  together  fearfully,  met  superficially,  were 
never  content  unless  they  were  meeting  superficially, 
creating  flattery  and  even  more  flattery  to  cover 
their  dread.  And,  as  they  were  forever  gazing 
downward  into  the  depths  from  which  they  had  been 
raised,  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  see  more  than 
a  yard  or  so  further  than  their  own  feet.    Fearful 

242 


IN    THE    SWIM 

of  taking  a  false  step,  they  never  moved;  their  minds 
curled  up  and  went  to  sleep.  They  could  create 
nothing,  and  could  only  imitate  and  reproduce.  They 
had  abandoned  the  dull  habits  of  the  middle  class 
and  yet  were  the  slaves  of  middle-class  ideas.  There 
were  very  charming  people  among  them,  but 
they  accepted  good-humoredly  that  England  had 
nothing  better  to  offer.  They  had  pleasant  houses 
in  Town  and  in  the  country,  delightful  and  amusing 
people  to  visit  them,  to  keep  them  from  boredom, 
and  they  asked  no  more. 

Old  Mole  studied  the  history  of  England,  the 
railway  frenzy,  the  growth  of  the  manufacturing 
districts,  the  foundation  of  the  great  shipbuilding 
yards,  the  immense  eruption  of  gold  that  had  swept 
away  the  old,  careless,  negligent,  ruling  squires,  and 
set  in  their  place  those  who  could  survive  the 
scramble.  And  the  scramble  had  never  ceased;  it 
had  been  accepted  as  the  normal  state  of  things. 
The  heat  and  excitement  of  the  rout  gave  the  illu- 
sion of  energy,  which,  being  without  moral  direction, 
was  pounced  upon  by  the  English  desire  for  com- 
fort and  the  appearance  of  solidarity,  the  mania  for 
having  the  best  of  everything  in  the  belief  that  it  will 
never  be  bettered.  So  against  the  inconveniences  of 
an  antiquated  system  of  laws,  a  mean  and  narrow 
code  of  morals,  the  consequences  of  their  own  reck- 
less disregard  of  health  in  the  building  of  the  great 
cities  of  industry,  in  the  payment  of  those  who 
labored  in  them,  they  padded  themselves  in  with 
comfort,  more  and  more  of  it. 

243 


OLD    MOLE 

"Almost,"  said  Old  Mole,  "I  am  persuaded  to 
become  a  Jew,  to  sweat  the  sweaters,  pick  the  profits, 
rule  the  world  in  honor  of  the  cynical  Hebrew  god 
who  created  it,  and  live  in  uneasy  triumph  in  the  do- 
mestic virtues  and  worship  of  the  flesh  uncrucified." 

Once  you  have  been  drawn  into  the  machine  it  is 
very  difficult  to  get  out  of  it.  Old  Mole  struggled, 
but  money  and  invitations  came  pouring  in.  uLossie 
Loses"  survived  two  holiday  seasons.  During  the 
second  the  actress  who  played  Lossie  went  away  on 
her  vacation,  and  Matilda,  urged  on  by  Butcher, 
with  whom  she  had  become  friendly,  played  the  part, 
was  successful,  and  gave  the  piece  a  new  spurt  of 
vitality.  It  was  not  a  brilliant  performance,  but 
then  a  brilliant  performance  would  have  killed  the 
play.  The  play  needed  charm,  Matilda  had  it,  and, 
by  this  time,  among  so  many  expertly  charming 
women,  she  had  learned  how  to  manipulate  it.  Her 
appearance  on  the  stage  extended  her  popularity 
among  her  distinguished  acquaintances,  but  subtly 
changed  her  status,  and  she  had  to  learn  how  to 
defend  herself.  Her  life  became  more  exciting  and 
she  expanded  in  response  to  it.  She  distressed  Old 
Mole  by  talking  about  her  adventures,  and  he  began 
to  think  it  was  really  time  to  go. 

They  went  abroad  for  several  months,  to  Paris, 
Florence,  Rome,  Sicily,  Algiers,  but  as  they  stayed 
in  luxurious  and  expensive  hotels  they  might  almost 
as  well  have  stayed  in  London.     Old  Mole  dis- 

244 


IN    THE    SWIM 

covered  nothing  except  that  the  eruption  of  gold 
must  have  been  universal  and  that  the  character  of 
the  English  nation  had  found  its  most  obvious  ex- 
pression in  its  stout,  solid,  permanent  telegraph 
poles. 

They  returned  to  London,  and  Matilda  accepted 
a  small  part  in  a  new  play  by  a  famous  dramatist, 
who  had  borrowed  "Lossie"  from  the  "greatest  suc- 
cess of  the  century,"  called  her  "Blendy,"  and  set 
her  to  leaven  the  mixture  he  had  produced  after  the 
two  years*  hard  work  fixed  as  the  proper  quantum 
by  Henrik  Ibsen. 

More  success. 

And  Old  Mole,  feeling  that  he  was  now  beyond 
all  hope  of  escape,  since  he  was  suffering  from  a 
noticeable  fatty  degeneration  of  the  will,  had  argued 
with  Matilda,  but  she  had  had  her  way,  for  he  could 
find  no  rejoinder  to  her  plea  that  it  was  "something 
to  do." 

He  refused  to  leave  Gray's  Inn.  She  was  tired 
of  it;  said  the  rooms  were  cramped,  but  he  clung  to 
it  as  an  anchorage. 

There  was  a  steadying  of  their  existence.  She 
took  her  work  seriously,  and  rested  as  much  as  pos- 
sible during  the  day.  In  the  evenings  he  missed  her, 
and  he  detested  having  his  dinner  at  half-past  six. 
But  the  discomfort  was  a  relief  and  gave  him  a  much 
needed  sharpening  of  the  wits.  Every  night  he  met 
her  at  the  theater  and  made  more  acquaintances 
in  it.  He  applied  his  theory  of  the  eruption  of  gold 
to  them,  and,  studying  them  for  that  purpose,  was 

245 


OLD   MOLE 

amazed  to  find  how  little  different  they  were  from 
Mr.  Copas  and  the  miserable  John  Lomas.  Copas 
had  been  untouched  by  the  eruption.  These  men, 
and  particularly  Henry  Butcher  and  Matilda's  man- 
ager, were  Copas  varnished  and  polished.  Beneath 
the  varnish  they  were  exactly  the  same ;  self-impor- 
tant, self-centered,  entirely  oblivious  of  life  outside 
the  theater,  utterly  unheeding  of  everything  outside 
their  profession  that  could  not  be  translated  into  its 
cant  and  jargon,  childishly  jealous,  greedy  of  ap- 
plause, sensitive  of  opinion,  boys  with  the  appetites 
and  desires  of  grown  men,  human  beings  whose  de- 
velopment had  been  arrested,  who,  in  a  healthy  so- 
ciety, would  be  rogues  and  vagabonds,  or  wandering 
adventurers,  from  sheer  inability  to  accept  the  re- 
strictions and  discipline  imposed  by  social  responsi- 
bility. They  were  cruelly  placed,  for  they  were  in 
a  position  needing  adult  powers,  having  audiences 
night  after  night  vaster  than  could  be  gathered  for 
any  divine  or  politician  or  demagogue;  they  had  to 
win  their  own  audiences,  for  no  theater  was  subsi- 
dized; and  when  they  had  won  them  they  were 
mulcted  in  enormous  sums  for  rent;  they  were 
sucked,  like  the  other  victims  of  the  eruption,  into 
the  machine,  the  zoetrope,  and  being  there,  in  that 
trap  and  lethal  chamber  of  spontaneity,  they  had  to 
charm  their  audiences,  with  nothing  more  than  the 
half-ideas,  the  sentimental  conventions,  the  clipped 
emotions  of  their  fellow  sufferers.  They  were 
squeezed  out  of  their  own  natures,  forced  into  new 
skins,  could  only  retain  their  positions  by  the  suc- 

246 


IN   THE    SWIM 

cessful  practice  of  their  profession,  and  were  forced 
to  produce  plays  and  shows  out  of  nothing,  being 
robbed  both  of  their  Copas-like  delight  in  their  work 
and  of  their  material  for  it.  Their  position  was 
calamitous  and  must  have  been  intolerable  without 
the  full  measure  of  applause  and  flattery  bestowed 
on  them. 

Clearly  it  was  not  through  the  theater  that  Old 
Mole  could  find  the  outlet  he  was  seeking. 

He  turned  wearily  from  its  staleness,  and  told 
himself,  after  long  pondering  of  the  problem,  that 
he  had  been  mistaken,  that  he  had  been  foolishly, 
and  a  little  arrogantly,  seeking  in  life  the  imagina- 
tive force,  the  mastery  of  ideas  and  human  thoughts 
and  feelings  that  he  had  found  in  literature.  Life, 
maybe,  proceeds  through  eruption  and  epidemic;  art 
through  human  understanding  and  sympathy  and 
will.  .  .  .  That  pleased  him  as  a  definite  result,  but 
at  once  he  was  offended  by  the  separation,  yet,  amid 
so  much  confusion,  it  was  difficult  to  resist  the  appeal 
of  so  clean  and  sharp  a  conception.  It  lost  the  clarity 
of  its  outline  when  he  set  it  against  his  earlier  idea 
of  living  brimming  over  into  life.  .  .  .  There  were 
then  three  things,  living,  life  and  art,  a  Trinity,  three 
lakes  fed  by  the  same  river.  That  was  large  and 
poetic,  but  surely  inaccurate.  For,  in  that  order, 
the  lakes  must  be  fed  by  a  strange  river  that  flowed 
upward.  .  .  .  Anyhow,  it  was  something  to  have 
established  the  three  things  which  could  comprise 
everything  that  had  penetrated  his  own  conscious- 
ness, three  things  which  were  of  the  same  essence, 

247 


OLD    MOLE 

expressions  of  the  same  force.  Within  the  action 
and  interaction  there  seemed  to  be  room  for  every- 
thing, even  for  Sir  Henry  Butcher,  even  for  Tyler 
Harbottle,  M.P. 

He  had  arrived  at  the  sort  of  indolent  charity 
which,  in  the  machine,  passes  for  wisdom  and  san- 
ity, the  unimaginative  tolerance  which  furs  and  clogs 
all  the  workings  of  a  man's  mind  and  heart.  It  is 
not  far  removed  from  indifference.  ...  In  his 
weariness,  the  exhaustion  and  satiety  of  the  modern 
world,  he  measured  his  wisdom  by  the  folly  of 
others,  and  in  his  satisfaction  at  the  discrepancy 
found  conceit  and  thought  it  confidence.  He  began 
to  write  again  and  returned  to  his  projected  essay 
on  Woman,  believing  that  he  had  in  his  idea  disen- 
tangled the  species  from  Matilda.  He  was  con- 
vinced that  he  had  risen  above  his  love  for  her,  to 
the  immense  profit  of  their  relationship,  which  had 
become  more  solid,  settled  and  pleasurable.  As  he 
had  planned  when  they  came  to  London,  so  it  had 
happened.  They  had  gone  their  ways,  seemed  for 
a  time  to  lose  sight  of  each  other,  met  again,  and 
were  now — were  they  not? — journeying  on  apace 
along  life's  highway,  hailing  the  travelers  by 
the  road,  aiding  the  weary,  cracking  a  joke  and 
a  yarn  with  those  of  good  cheer,  staying  in  pleasant 
inns. 

"Something  like  a  marriage  I"  thought  he.  "Life's 
fullest  adventure." 

And  he  measured  his  marriage  against  those  of 
the  men  and  women  in  the  machine;  sour  captivity 

248 


IN   THE    SWIM 

for  the  most  part,  or  a  shallow,  prattling  and  osten 
tatious  devotion. 

His  essay  on  Woman  was  only  a  self-satisfied  de- 
scription of  his  marriage.  Out  of  the  writing  of  it 
came  no  profit  except  to  his  vanity.  Preoccupied  with 
questions  of  style,  he  pruned  and  pared  it  down,  re- 
fashioned and  remodeled  it  until  at  last  he  could  not 
read  it  himself.  Having  no  convenient  sands  in 
which  to  bury  it,  he  gave  it  to  Panoukian  to  read. 

Panoukian  was  in  that  stage  of  development 
(which  has  nothing  to  do  with  age)  when  a  man 
needs  to  find  his  fellows  worshipful  and  looks  for 
wonders  from  them.  He  was  very  young,  and  kind- 
ness from  a  man  older  than  himself  could  bowl  him 
over  completely,  set  his  affections  frothing  and 
babbling  over  his  judgment,  so  that  he  became  en- 
slaved and  sycophantish,  and  prepared,  mentally  if 
not  physically,  to  stand  on  his  head  if  it  so  hap- 
pened that  the  object  of  his  admiration  could  be 
served  by  it.  He  was  in  a  nervous  state  of  flux,  pos- 
sessing small  mastery  over  his  faculties,  many  of 
which  were  only  in  bud;  his  life  was  so  little  his  own, 
was  so  shapeless  and  unformed  that  there  could  be 
no  moderation  in  him;  his  admirations  were  exces- 
sive, had  more  than  once  landed  him  in  the  mire,  so 
that  he  was  a  little  afraid  of  them,  and  to  guard 
against  these  dangers  sought  refuge  in  intolerance. 
To  prevent  himself  seeing  beauty  and  nobility  and 
being  intoxicated  by  them,  he  created  bugbears  for 
himself  and  hated  them,  and  was  forever  tracking 
them  down  and  finding  their  marks  in  the  moot 

249 


OLD   MOLE 

innocent  persons  and  places.  He  was  very  young, 
mightily  in  love  with  love,  so  that  he  was  forever 
guarding  himself  from  coming  to  it  too  early  and 
being  fobbed  off  with  love  cheapened  or  soiled.  His 
passion  was  for  "reality,"  of  which  he  had  only  the 
most  shapeless  and  uncommunicable  conception,  but 
he  was  always  talking  about  it  with  fierce  denuncia- 
tions of  all  the  people  who  seemed  to  him  to  be 
deliberately,  with  criminal  folly,  burking  it.  For 
this  reality  his  instinct  was  to  preserve  himself,  and 
he  lived  in  terror  of  his  loneliness  driving  him  to 
headlong  falls  from  which  he  might  never  be  able 
to  recover.  He  was  a  full-blooded,  healthy  young 
man  and  must  have  been  wretchedly  unhappy  had 
it  not  been  that  people,  in  their  indolent,  careless 
way,  were  often  enough  kind  to  him  to  draw  off 
some  of  his  accumulated  enthusiasm  in  an  explosive 
admiration  and  effusive,  though  tactfully  manipu- 
lated, affection.  Old  Mole  was  kinder  to  him  than 
anyone  had  ever  been  except  his  father,  but  then  his 
father  had  had  no  other  methods  than  those  of  com- 
mon sense,  while  in  Old  Mole  there  was  a  subtlety 
always  surprising  and  refreshing.  Also  Old  Mole 
was  prepared  almost  indefinitely,  as  it  seemed,  to 
listen  to  Panoukian's  views  and  opinions  and  rough 
winnowing  of  the  wheat  from  the  chaff  of  life,  so 
far  as  he  had  experienced  it. 

Panoukian  therefore  read  Old  Mole's  manu- 
script with  the  fervor  of  a  disciple,  and  found  in  it 
the  heat  and  vigor  which  he  himself  always  brought 
to  their  discussions.     The  essay,  indeed,  was  like 

%$Q 


IN   THE    SWIM 

the  master's  talk,  cool  and  deliberate,  broken  in  its 
monotony  by  comical  little  stabs  of  malice.  The 
writing  was  fastidious  and  competent.  Panoukian 
thought  the  essay  a  masterpiece,  and  there  crept  a 
sort  of  reverence  into  his  attitude  toward  its  au- 
thor. This  was  an  easy  transition,  for  he  had  never 
quite  shaken  off  the  rather  frightened  respect  of  the 
pupil  for  the  schoolmaster.  Then,  to  complete  his 
infatuation,  he  contrasted  Old  Mole  with  his  em- 
ployer, Harbottle. 

And  Old  Mole  was  fond  of  Panoukian.  At  first 
it  was  the  sort  of  amused  tenderness  which  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  feel  on  the  sight  of  a  leggy  colt  in  a 
field  or  a  woolly  kitten  staggering  after  a  ball. 
Then,  by  association  and  familiarity,  it  was  enriched 
and  became  a  thing  as  near  friendship  as  there  can 
be  between  men  of  widely  different  ages,  between 
immaturity  and  ripeness.  It  saved  the  situation  for 
both  of  them,  the  young  man  from  his  wildness,  the 
older  from  the  violent  distortion  of  values  which 
had  become  necessary  if  he  were  to  move  easily 
and  comfortably  in  the  swim.  Above  all,  for  Old 
Mole,  it  was  amusing.  For  Panoukian  nothing  was 
amusing.  In  his  intense  longing  for  the  "reality" 
of  his  dreams  he  hated  amusement;  he  detested  the 
vast  expenditure  of  energy  in  the  modern  world  on 
making  existence  charming  and  pleasant  and  com- 
fortable, the  elaborate  ingenuity  with  which  the  facts 
of  life  were  hidden  and  glossed  over;  he  despised 
companionable  books,  and  fantastical  pictures  and 
plays,    luxurious    entertainments,    magazines    filled 

251 


OLD   MOLE 

with  advertisements  and  imbecile  love-stories,  kine- 
matographs,  spectacular  football,  could  not  under- 
stand how  any  man  could  devote  his  energies  to  the 
creation  of  them  and  retain  his  sincerity  and  honesty. 
He  adored  what  he  called  the  English  genius,  and 
was  disappointed  and  hurt  because  the  whole  of 
English  life  was  not  a  spontaneous  expression  of  it, 
and  he  found  one  of  his  stock  examples  in  archi- 
tecture. He  would  storm  and  inveigh  against  the 
country  because  the  English  architectural  tradition 
had  been  allowed  to  lapse  away  back  in  the  dark 
ages  of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  had  many  other 
instances  of  the  obscuring  or  sudden  obliteration  of 
the  fairest  tendencies  of  the  English  genius,  and. 
to  their  mutual  satisfaction,  Old  Mole  would  put  it 
all  down  to  his  theory  of  the  eruption  of  gold. 

Nearly  all  Panoukian's  leisure  was  spent  at  Gray's 
Inn  or  out  with  Old  Mole  and  Matilda,  or  with 
them  on  their  visits  to  those  of  their  friends  to  whom 
they  had  introduced  him.  He  was  good-looking, 
well  built,  easily  adept  at  ball-games — for  he  pos- 
sessed a  quick,  sure  eye — and  his  shy  frankness  made 
him  likeable.  The  charm  of  English  country  life 
would  soften  his  violence  and  soothe  his  prejudices, 
but  only  the  more,  when  he  returned  to  London, 
would  he  chafe  against  the  incessant  pursuit  of  ma- 
terial advantages,  the  mania  of  unselective  acqui- 
sition, the  spinning  and  droning  of  the  many-col- 
ored humming-top. 

From  the  first  moment  he  had  been  Matilda's 
slave,  and  no  trouble  was  too  great,  no  time  too 

252 


IN   THE    SWIM 

long,  no  task  too  tedious,  if  only  he  could  yield  her 
some  small  service.  He  would  praise  her  to  Old 
Mole: 

"She  is  so  real.  Compare  her  with  other  women. 
She  does  all  the  things  they  do,  and  does  them  bet- 
ter. She  takes  them  in  her  stride.  She  can  laugh 
with  you,  talk  with  you,  understand  what  you  mean 
better  than  you  do  yourself,  give  you  just  the  lit- 
tle encouragement  you  need,  and  you  can  talk  to  her 
and  forget  that  she  is  a  woman.  .  .  .  You  don't 
know,  sir,  what  an  extraordinary  difference  it  has 
made  in  my  life  since  I  have  known  you  two." 

That  would  embarrass  Old  Mole,  and  he  found 
it  impossible  to  say  anything  without  jarring  Panou- 
kian's  feelings.  Therefore  he  would  say  nothing, 
and  later  he  would  look  at  Matilda,  watch  her,  wait 
for  her  smile,  and  wonder.  Her  smile  was  the  most 
surprising,  the  most  intimate  gift  he  ever  had  from 
her.  Often  for  days  together  they  would  hardly 
see  each  other  and,  when  they  met,  would  have  little 
to  say,  but  he  would  watch  until  he  could  meet  her 
gaze,  win  a  smile  from  her,  and  feel  her  friendli- 
ness, her  interest,  and  know  that  they  still  had  much 
to  share  and  were  still  profoundly  aware  of  each 
other.     He  would  say  to  her  sometimes: 

"I  don't  see  much  of  you  nowadays." 

She  would  answer: 

"But  you  are  so  interested  in  so  many  things. 
And  I  like  my  life." 

And  in  the  gentle  gravity  with  which  she  now 
spoke  to  him,  which  was  in  every  gesture  of  her 

*S3 


OLD    MOLE 

attitude  toward  him,  he  would  discern  a  fuller 
grace  than  any  he  had  hoped  to  find  in  her.  She 
was  so  trim  and  neat,  so  well  disciplined,  so  delicate 
and  nice  in  all  she  did;  restrained  and  subtle  but 
with  no  loss  of  force.  Even  her  follies,  the  absurd 
modish  tricks  she  had  caught  in  the  theater  and 
among  the  women  who  fawned  on  her,  seemed  no 
impediment  to  her  impulse  should  the  moment  come 
for  yielding  to  it.  She  was  no  more  spendthrift  of 
emotion  and  affection  than  she  was  of  money,  and, 
almost,  he  thought,  too  thorough  in  her  self-ef- 
facement and  endeavor  to  be  no  kind  of  burden  upon 
him. 

"I  am  so  proud  of  you!"  he  would  say. 

And  she  would  smile  and  answer: 

"You  don't  know,  you  never  will  know,  how 
grateful  I  am  to  you." 

But  her  eyes  would  gaze  far  beyond  him,  through 
him,  and  light  up  wistfully,  and  he  would  have  a 
queer  discomfortable  sensation  of  being  a  sojourner 
in  his  own  house.  Then  he  would  think  and  puz- 
zle over  Panoukian's  rapturous  description  of  her. 
She  was  discreet  and  guarded:  only  her  smile  was 
intimate;  her  thoughts,  if  she  had  thoughts,  were 
shy  and  never  sought  out  his;  demonstrative  she 
never  was.  She  led  a  busy,  active  life,  the  normal 
existence  of  moneyed  or  successful  women  in  Lon- 
don, and  she  was  distinguished  in  her  efficiency.  She 
had  learned  and  developed  taste,  and  was  ever 
transforming  the  chambers  in  Gray's  Inn,  driving 
out  Robert  and  installing  in  every  corner  of  it  the 

254 


IN   THE    SWIM 

expression  of  her  own  personality.  After  the  first 
dazzling  discovery  of  the  possibilities  of  clothes  she 
had  rebelled  against  the  price  charged  by  the  fash- 
ionable dressmakers  and  made  her  own  gowns. 
Robert  used  to  twit  her  about  her  restlessness,  and 
declared  that  one  week  when  he  came  he  would  find 
her  wearing  the  curtains,  and  the  next  her  gown 
would  be  covering  the  cushions.  Old  Mole  used  to 
tease  her,  too,  but  what  she  would  take  quite  ami- 
ably from  Robert  she  could  not  endure  from  him. 
"I  thought  you'd  like  it,"  she  would  say. 
"But,  my  dear,  I  do  like  it!" 
"Then  why  do  you  make  fun  of  me?" 
And  sometimes  there  would  be  tears.  Once  it 
came  to  a  quarrel,  and  after  they  had  made  it  up 
she  said  she  wanted  a  change,  and  went  off  to  stay 
with  Bertha  Boothroyd.  In  two  days  she  was  back 
again  with  the  most  maliciously  funny  description  of 
Jim's  reception  of  her  and  his  absolute  refusal  to 
leave  her  alone  with  Bertha  lest  she  should  be  con- 
taminated. Then  she  was  gay  and  light-hearted, 
glad  to  be  back  again  and  more  busy  than  ever,  and 
when  Panoukian  came  to  see  them  she  teased  him 
out  of  his  solemnity  and  earnestness  almost  into 
tears  of  rage.  She  told  him  he  ought  to  go  to 
Thrigsby  and  work,  find  some  real  work  to  do  and 
not  loaf  about  in  London,  in  blue  socks  and  white 
spats,  waiting  until  he  was  old  enough  to  be  taken 
seriously. 

He  went  away  in  the  depths  of  misery,  and  she 
said  to  Old  Mole  : 

*55. 


OLD    MOLE 

"Why  don't  you  find  him  something  to  do?" 

"I?    How  can  I  find  him.  .  .   ?" 

"Don't  you  know  that  you  are  a  very  important 
person?  You  know  everybody  who  is  anybody,  and 
there  is  nobody  you  can't  know  if  you  want  to.  Think 
of  the  hundreds  of  men  in  London  who  spend  their 
whole  lives  struggling  to  pull  themselves  up  into 
your  position  so  that  in  the  end  they  may  have  the 
pleasure  of  jobbing  some  one  into  a  billet." 

"That,"  said  Old  Mole,  "is  what  Panoukian  calls 
Harbottling." 

She  made  him  promise  to  think  it  over,  and  he 
began  to  dream  of  a  career  for  Panoukian,  a  real 
career  on  the  lines  of  Self-Help. 

In  his  original  pedagogic  relation  with  Panou- 
kian he  had  blocked  out  for  him  an  ascent  upon  well- 
marked  and  worn  steps  through  Oxford  into  the 
Home  Civil  Service,  wherein  by  the  proper  grada- 
tions he  should  rise  to  be  a  Permanent  Under-Sec- 
retary and  a  Knight,  and  a  credit  to  the  school.  To 
the  altered  Panoukian  and  to  Old  Mole's  changed 
and  changing  mind  that  ambitious  flight  was  now 
inadequate.  Panoukian  was  undoubtedly  intelligent. 
Old  Mole  had  not  yet  discovered  the  idea  that  could 
baffle  him,  and  he  was  positively  reckless  in  his 
readiness  to  discard  those  which  neither  fitted  into 
the  philosophy  he  for  the  moment  held  nor  seemed 
to  lead  to  a  further  philosophy  at  which  he  hoped 
to  arrive.  Every  day  Panoukian  became  more 
youthful  and  every  day  more  breathlessly  irrever- 
ent.   Nothing  was  sacred  to  him :  he  insisted  on  se- 

256 


IN    THE    SWIM 

lecting  his  own  great  men,  and  Old  Mole  was  forced 
to  admit  that  there  was  some  wisdom  in  his  choice. 
He  read  Voltaire  and  hated  organized  religion; 
Nietzsche  and  detested  the  slothfulness  and  mean 
egoism  of  the  disordered  collection  of  human  lives 
called  democracy;  Butler  and  quizzed  at  the  most 
respected  and  dozing  of  English  institutions;  Dos- 
toevsky  and  yearned  out  in  a  thinly  passionate  sym- 
pathy to  the  suffering  and  the  diseased  and  the 
victims  of  grinding  poverty.  He  was  not  altogether 
the  slave  of  his  great  men:  after  all  they  were  dead; 
life  went  on  and  did  not  repeat  itself,  and  he 
(Panoukian)  was  in  the  thick  of  it,  and  determined 
not  to  be  crushed  by  it  into  a  cushioned  ease  or  the 
sodden  insensibility  of  too  great  misery. 

"My  problem,"  he  would  say,  "is  myself.  My 
only  possible  and  valid  contribution  to  any  general 
problem  is  the  effective  solution  of  that.  In  other 
words,  can  I  or  can  I  not  become  a  human  being? 
If  I  succeed  I  help  things  on  by  that  much;  if  I  fail, 
I  become  a  Harbottle  and  retard  things  by  that 
much.     Do  you  follow  me?" 

Old  Mole  was  not  at  all  sure  that  he  did,  but  he 
found  Panoukian  refreshing,  for  there  was  in  him 
something  both  to  touch  the  affections  and  excite 
the  mind,  and  in  his  immediate  surroundings  there 
was  very  little  to  do  as  much.  There  were  men 
who  talked,  men  who  did  little  or  nothing  else;  but 
they  lacked  warmth,  they  were  Laputans  living  on 
a  floating  island  above  a  land  desolate  in  the  midst 
of  plenty.     Among  such  men  it  was  difficult  to  con- 

257 


OLD    MOLE 

ceive  of  Panoukian  finding  a  profitable  occupation. 
Take  him  out  of  politics,  and  where  could  he  be 
placed?  For  what  had  his  education  fitted  him? 
Panoukian  had  had  every  kind  of  education.  He 
had  begun  life  in  an  elementary  school,  passed  on 
by  his  own  cleverness  to  a  secondary  school,  and 
from  that  to  the  university  where  contact  with  the 
ancient  traditions  of  English  culture,  manhood  and 
citizenship  had  flung  him  into  revolt  and  set  him 
thinking  about  life  before  he  had  lived,  braying 
about  among  philosophies  before  he  had  need  of 
any.  There  was  a  fine  stew  in  his  brain,  a  tre- 
mendous array  of  ideas  beleaguering  Panoukian 
without  there  being  any  actual  definite  Panoukian  to 
beleaguer.  Certainly  Old  Mole  could  not  remember 
ever  having  been  in  such  a  state  himself,  nor  in  any 
generation  subsequent  to  his  own  could  he  remember 
symptoms  which  could  account  for  the  phenomenon. 
He  had  to  look  far  to  discover  other  Panoukians. 
They  were  everywhere,  male  and  female.  He  set 
himself  to  discover  them;  they  were  in  journalism, 
in  science,  in  the  schools  of  art,  on  the  stage,  writing 
wonderfully  bad  books,  producing  mannered  and 
deliberately  ugly  verse,  quarreling  among  them- 
selves, wrangling,  detesting  each  other,  impatient, 
intolerant,  outraging  convention  and  their  affection- 
ate and  well-meaning  parents  and  guardians,  united 
only  in  the  one  savage  determination  not  to  lick 
the  boots  of  the  generation  that  preceded  them. 
When  they  could  admire  they  worshiped;  they 
needed  to  admire;  they  wanted  to  admire  all  men, 

258 


IN   THE    SWIM 

and  those  men  whom  they  found  unadmirable  they 
hated. 

It  was  all  very  well  (thought  Old  Mole)  for  Ma- 
tilda with  her  cool  common  sense  to  say  that  Panou- 
kian  must  do  something.  What  could  he  do?  His 
only  positive  idea  seemed  to  be  that  he  would  not 
become  a  Harbottle;  and  how  better  could  he  set 
about  that  than  by  living  among  the  species  with 
the  bitterness  of  his  hatred  sinking  so  deep  into  his 
soul  that  in  the  end  it  must  become  sweetness?  In 
theory  Panoukian  was  reckless  and  violent;  in  prac- 
tice he  was  affectionate  and  generous,  much  too  full 
of  the  spasmodic,  shy  kindness  of  the  young  to  fit 
into  the  Self-Help  tradition.  Indeed,  it  was  just 
here  that  the  Panoukians,  male  and  female,  were  so 
astonishing.  For  generations  in  England  personal 
ambition  had  been  the  only  motive  force,  the  sole 
measure  of  virtue,  and  it  was  personal  ambition  that 
they  utterly  ignored.  They  were  truly  innocent  of 
it.  Upon  that  axis  the  society  in  which  they  were 
born  revolved.  They  could  not  move  with  it,  for  it 
seemed  to  them  stationary,  and  it  was  abhorrent  to 
them.  Their  thoughts  were  not  the  thoughts  of  the 
people  around  them.  They  could  neither  speak  the 
old  language  nor  invent  a  new  speech  in  which  to 
make  themselves  understood.  Virtue  they  could 
perceive  in  their  young  hunger  for  life,  but  virtue 
qualified  by  personal  ambition  and  subserving  it  they 
could  not  understand.  They  were  asking  for  bread 
and  always  they  were  offered  stones.  .  .  .  Old  Mole 
could  not  see  what  better  he  could  do  than  be  kind 

259 


OLD    MOLE 

to  Panoukian,  defend  him  from  his  solitude  and 
give  him  the  use  of  the  advantages  in  the  "swim" 
of  London  which  he  had  no  mind  himself  to  employ. 

One  of  the  few  definite  and  tangible  planks  in 
Panoukian's  program  was  a  stubborn  conviction 
that  he  must  have  an  "idea"  of  everything.  It  was, 
he  insisted,  abominable  to  live  in  London  unless 
there  was  in  his  mind  a  real  conception  of  London. 

"You  see,"  he  would  say,  "it  would  be  charm- 
ing and  pleasant  to  accept  London  as  consisting  of 
the  Temple,  the  House  and  Gray's  Inn,  with  an 
imperceptible  thread  of  vitality  other  than  my  own 
to  bind  them  together.  We've  had  enough  of  try- 
ing to  make  life  charming  and  pleasant.  All  that  is 
just  swinish  rolling  in  the  mud.  Do  you  follow  me? 
We've  had  enough.  We  were  begotten  and  con- 
ceived and  born  in  the  mud,  and  we've  got  to  get 
out  of  it;  and,  unless  you  see  that  mud  is  mud,  you 
can't  see  the  hills  beyond,  and  the  clear  rivers,  and 
the  sky.    Can  you?" 

"No,  you  can't,"  said  Old  Mole,  groping  about 
in  his  incoherence,  and  speaking  only  because  Panou- 
kian was  waiting  for  a  shove  into  his  further  specu- 
lations. 

"I  mean,  London  may  be  all  in  a  mess,  which  it  is, 
but  if  I  haven't  a  clear  idea  of  the  mess  I  can't  begin 
to  mop  it  up,  and  I  can't  begin  on  it  at  all  until  I've 
cleaned  up  the  bit  of  the  mess  that  is  in  myself,  can 
I?     I  mean,  take  marriage,  for  instance." 

"By  all  means,  take  marriage." 
260 


IN   THE    SWIM 

"Well,  you're  married  and  I'm  not,  but  it  isn't  a 
bit  of  good  screaming  about  marriage  unless  your 
own  marriage  is  straightened  out  and, — you  know 
what  I  mean? — understood,  is  it?  .  .  ." 

So  he  would  go  on,  whirling  from  one  topic  to 
another — marriage,  morals,  democracy,  the  will  to 
power, — thinking  in  sharp  contrasts,  sometimes 
hardly  thinking,  but  feeling  always.  Vaguely,  with- 
out objects,  catching  himself  out  in  some  detestable 
sentimentality,  admitting  it  frankly  and  going  back 
again  over  his  whole  argument  to  pluck  it  out. 
Panoukian  was  to  himself  a  weedy  field,  and  with 
bowed  back  and  stiffened  loins  he  was  engrossed  in 
stubbing  it.  It  was  exhausting  to  watch  him  at  it, 
and  when,  as  sometimes  happened,  Old  Mole  saw 
things  through  Panoukian's  eyes  he  was  disquieted. 
Then  there  seemed  no  security  in  existence ;  civiliza- 
tion was  no  longer  an  achievement,  but  a  fluid 
stream  flowing  over  a  varied  bed — rock,  pebbles, 
mud,  sand;  society  was  no  establishment,  but  a  pre- 
carious, tottering  thing,  a  tower  of  silted  sands  with 
an  oozy  base,  blocking  the  river,  squeezing  it  into  a 
narrow  and  unpleasant  channel.  In  the  nature  of 
things  and  its  law  the  river  would  one  day  gather 
unto  itself  great  waters  and  bear  the  sands  away. 
.  .  .  Meanwhile  men  strove  to  make  the  sand 
heap  habitable,  for  they  were  born  on  it,  lived  and 
died  on  it,  and  never  looked  beyond.  Their  whole 
lives  were  filled  with  dread  of  its  crumbling,  their 
whole  energies  devoted  to  building  up  against  it  and 
against  the  action  of  wind  and  rain  and  sun.    They 

261 


OLD   MOLE 

built  themselves  in  and  looked  not  out,  and  made 
their  laws  by  no  authority  but  only  by  expediency. 
And  the  young  men,  in  their  vitality  too  great  for 
such  confinement,  knew  that  somewhere  there  must 
be  firm  ground,  and  were  determined  to  excavate 
and  to  explore.  And  Old  Mole  wished  them  well 
in  the  person  of  Panoukian. 

That  young  man  set  himself  to  discover  London. 
He  was  forever  coming  to  Gray's  Inn  with  exciting 
tales  of  streets  discovered  down  by  the  docks  or  in 
the  great  regions  of  the  northern  suburbs.  He  set 
himself  to  walk  from  end  to  end  of  it,  from  Ealing 
to  West  Ham,  from  Dulwich  to  Tottenham,  and  he 
vowed  that  there  were  men  really  living  in  it,  and 
he  began  to  think  of  the  democracy  as  a  real  entity, 
to  be  exalted  at  the  thought  of  its  power.  Old  Mole 
demurred.  The  democracy  had  no  power,  since  it 
knew  not  how  to  grasp  it.  Its  only  instrument  was 
the  vote,  which  was  the  engine  of  the  Harbottles, 
the  nibblers,  the  place-seekers,  the  pleasure-hunters, 
those  who  scrambled  to  the  top  of  the  sandy  tower, 
where  in  the  highest  cavern  there  were  at  least  air 
and  light  and  only  the  faintest  stench  from  the 
river's  mud.  Here  there  was  so  much  divergence 
between  Old  Mole  and  Panoukian  that  they  ceased 
to  talk  the  same  language,  and  Old  Mole  would 
try  another  tack  and  reach  the  stop-gap  conclusion 
that  the  difference  came  about  from  the  fact  that 
Gray's  Inn  was  very  comfortable,  while  Panoukian's 
chambers  in  the  Temple  were  bleak  and  bare.    That 

26z 


IN   THE    SWIM 

was  unsatisfactory,  for  Panoukian  would  inveigh 
against  comfort  and  vow,  as  indeed  was  obvious, 
that  no  one  had  yet  devised  a  profitable  means  of 
spending  a  private  income  of  thirty  thousand  a  year. 
After  reading  an  economic  treatise  he  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  whole  political  problem  resolved 
itself  into  the  wages  question.  Old  Mole  hated 
problems  and  questions.  They  parched  his  imagina- 
tion. His  whole  pleasure  in  Panoukian's  society  lay 
in  the  young  man's  power  to  flood  ideas  with  his 
vitality.  He  argued  on  economic  lines  and  gradu- 
ally forced  the  young  man  up  to  the  spiritual  plane 
and  then  gave  him  his  conception  of  society  as  a 
sand  heap.  That  fired  Panoukian.  Was  it  or  was 
it  not  necessary  for  human  beings  to  live  upon  shift- 
ing ground,  with  no  firm  foothold?  And  he  said 
that  the  great  men  had  been  those  who  had  gone 
out  into  the  world  and  brought  back  tales  of  the 
fair  regions  contained  therein. 

"They  have  dreamed  of  fair  regions,"  said  Old 
Mole,  "but  no  man  has  ever  gone  out  to  them." 

"Then,"  said  Panoukian,  "it  is  quite  time  some 
one  did." 

Matilda  came  in  on  that,  caught  the  last  words, 
and  asked  hopefully: 

"What  is  it  you  are  going  to  do?" 

"He  is  going,"  said  Old  Mole,  "to  discover  the 
bedrock  of  life  and  live  on  it." 

"Is  that  all?"  Matilda  looked  disappointed.  "I 
hoped  it  was  something  practical  at  last." 

The  two  men  tried  to  carry  on  the  discussion,  but 
263 


OLD    MOLE 

she  closured  it  by  saying  that  she  wanted  to  be 
taken  out  to  dinner  and  amused.  Panoukian  flew  to 
dress  himself  in  ordered  black  and  white,  and  Ma- 
tilda said  to  Old  Mole : 

"The  trouble  with  you  two  is  that  you  have  too 
much  money." 

"That,  my  dear,  is  the  trouble  with  almost  every- 
body, and,  like  everybody  else,  we  sit  on  it  and 
talk." 

"It  would  do  you  both  a  world  of  good  to  have 
some  real  hard,  unpleasant  work." 

"I  can't  agree  with  you.  For  twenty-five  years 
I  had  real,  hard,  unpleasant  work  five  days  in  the 
week,  and  it  profited  neither  myself  nor  anybody 
else.  I  went  on  with  it  because  it  seemed  impossible 
to  leave  it.  It  left  me,  and  my  life  has  been  a  much 
brighter  and  healthier  thing  to  me.  Panoukian  is 
young  enough  to  talk  himself  into  action.  I  shall  go 
on  talking  forever." 

And  he  went  on  talking.  Matilda  produced  a 
workbox  and  a  pile  of  stockings  and  began  darning 
them.  They  sat  one  on  either  side  of  the  fireplace, 
and  in  the  chimney  sounded  the  explosive  coo  of  a 
pigeon. 

"My  dear,"  said  Old  Mole,  "you  know,  I  believe 
in  Panoukian.  I  believe  he  will  make  something  of 
himself.  I  fancy  that  when  he  is  mature  enough  to 
know  what  he  wants  he  will  be  absolutely  ruthless 
in  making  for  it." 

"Do  you?" 

Matilda  rolled  a  pair  of  stockings  up  into  a  ball 
264 


IN   THE    SWIM 

and  tossed  them  into  a  basket  on  the  sofa  some 
yards  away.  It  was  a  neat  shot,  and  Old  Mole 
admired  the  gesture  with  which  she  made  it,  the 
fling  of  the  arm,  the  swift  turn  of  the  wrist. 

"I  do,"  he  said.  "Until  then  there  can  be  no 
harm  in  his  talking." 

"No.     I  suppose  not.     But  you  do  go  on  so." 

Panoukian  returned.  Matilda  made  ready,  and 
they  set  out.  Old  Mole  took  them  up  to  the  Hol- 
born  gate  and  watched  them  walk  along  toward 
Chancery  Lane.  It  was  a  July  evening.  He  watched 
them  until  they  were  swallowed  up  in  the  hurrying 
crowd,  the  young  man  tall  and  big,  towering  above 
Matilda  small  and  neat.  He  saw  one  or  two  men 
in  the  street  turn  and  look  at  her,  at  them  perhaps, 
for  they  made  a  handsome  couple.  He  admired 
them  and  was  moved,  and  a  mist  covered  his  spec- 
tacles. He  took  them  off  and  wiped  them.  Then, 
kindling  to  the  thought  of  a  quiet  evening  to  end  in 
the  excitement  of  their  return,  he  walked  slowly 
back  under  the  windows  flaring  in  the  sunset. 

"Truly,"  he  said,  "the  world  is  with  the  young 
men.  There  can  be  no  pleasanter  task  for  the 
middle-aged  than  to  assist  them,  but,  alas !  we  can 
teach  them  nothing,  for,  as  the  years  go  by,  there 
is  more  and  more  to  learn." 

He  sat  up  until  half-past  one  with  the  chamber 
growing  ever  more  chill  and  empty,  and  his  heart 
sinking  as  he  thought  of  accidents  that  might  have 

265 


OLD    MOLE 

befallen  them.  He  was  asleep  on  their  return  and 
never  knew  its  precise  hour.  They  gave  a  per- 
fectly frank  and  probable  account  of  their  doings: 
dinner  at  a  grill-room,  a  music-hall,  supper  at  a  Ger- 
man restaurant,  and  then  on  to  an  At  Home  at  the 
Schlegelmeiers',  where  there  had  been  a  squash  so 
thick  that  once  you  were  in  a  room  it  was  impossible 
to  move  to  any  of  the  others.  They  had  been 
wedged  into  the  gallery  of  the  great  drawing-room 
at  Withington  House,  where  the  principal  entertain- 
ment had  been  a  Scotch  comedian  who  chanted  lilt- 
ing ballads.  It  was  this  distinguished  artist's  habit 
to  make  his  audience  sing  the  chorus  of  each  song, 
and  it  had  been  diverting  to  see  duchesses  and  ladies 
of  high  degree  and  political  hostesses  singing  with 
the  abandon  of  the  gods  at  an  outlying  two-shows- 
a-night  house : 

Rolling,  rolling  in  the  heather, 
All  in  the  bonny  August  weather, 

There  was  me  and  Leezy  Lochy  in  the  dingle, 
There  was  Jock  and  Maggie  Kay  in  the  dell, 

For  ilka  lassie  has  her  laddie, 

And  ilka  laddie  has  his  lassie, 
And  what  they  dae  together  Til  na  tell, 
But  Leezy,  Leezy  Lochy   in   the  dingle, 

Is  bonny  as  the  moon  above  the  heather. 

Matilda  sang  the  song  all  through  and  made  Old 
Mole  and  Panoukian  troll  the  chorus.  There  were 
a  freshness  and  warmth  about  her  that  were  almost 
startling,  full  of  mischief  and  sparkling  fun.     She 

266 


IN   THE    SWIM 

teased  both  the  men  and  mysteriously  promised  them 
a  great  reward  if  they  could  guess  a  riddle. 

"My  second  is  in  woman  but  not  in  man,  my  first 
is  French,  I  have  two  syllables,  and  you'll  never 
guess." 

"Where  did  you  get  it?"  asked  Panoukian. 

"I  made  it  up." 

So  they  tried  to  guess  and  soon  confessed  them- 
selves beaten.  Then  she  told  them  that  the  second 
half  of  the  riddle  was  sense,  because  she  never  knew 
a  man  who  had  it;  and  the  first  half  was  non  and 
together  they  made  nonsense,  because  she  felt 
like  it. 

Her  mood  lasted  for  five  days.  Panoukian  came 
in  every  evening — (she  was  rehearsing  for  a  new 
play,  but  only  in  the  daytime) — and  they  frolicked 
and  sang  and  burlesqued  their  own  solemn  discus- 
sions. On  the  sixth  day  her  high  spirits  sank  and 
she  was  moody  and  silent.  She  forbade  Panoukian 
to  come  in  the  evening.  He  came  at  teatime,  and 
she  stayed  out.  One  day  Old  Mole  had  tea  with 
Panoukian.  They  walked  in  the  Temple  Gardens 
afterward,  and  Panoukian  blurted  out: 

"I  don't  know  if  your  wife  has  told  you,  sir,  but 
after  we  left  the  Schlegelmeiers'  it  was  such  a  glori- 
ous night,  and  we  were  so  glad  to  be  in  the  air  again, 
that  we  took  a  taxi  and  drove  down  to  Richmond 
and  came  back  in  the  dawn.  There  wasn't  any  harm 
in  it,  as  you  and  I  see  things,  but  I've  been  thinking 
it  over  and  come  to  the  conclusion  that  you  ought  to 
know." 

267 


OLD    MOLE 

A  sudden  anger  took  possession  of  Old  Mole,  and 
he  retorted: 

"Of  course,  if  there  were  any  harm  in  it,  you 
wouldn't  tell  me." 

"Hang  it  all,  sir.  You  haven't  any  right  to  say 
that  to  me." 

"No,  no.  Quite  right.  I  haven't.  No.  I  beg 
your  pardon.  I'm  glad  to  see  you  such  friends.  She 
isn't  very  good  at  making  friends.  Acquaintances 
come  and  go,  but  there  seem  to  be  very  few  people 
whom  she  and  I  can  share." 

"I  have  the  profoundest  respect  for  her,"  said 
Panoukian.  "As  we  were  coming  back  in  the  dawn 
she  told  me  all  her  life.  The  things  she  has  suf- 
fered, the  misery  she  has  come  through." 

And  they  fraternized  in  their  sympathy  for  Ma- 
tilda. Panoukian  gave  an  instance  of  her  early 
sufferings.  She  had  never  told  it  to  her  husband, 
and  he  returned  to  Gray's  Inn  puzzled  and  uneasy, 
to  find  her  sitting  idle,  doing  nothing,  with  no  pre- 
tence at  activity.  He  was  tender  with  her,  and 
asked  if  she  might  be  ill.  She  said  no,  but  she  had 
been  thinking  and  wanted  to  know  what  was  the  good 
of  anything.  She  said  she  knew  she  never  could  be 
like  the  other  women  they  knew;  it  wasn't  any  good, 
they  seemed  to  feel  that  she  was  different  and  hadn't 
had  their  education  and  pleasant  girlhood,  and  they 
only  wanted  her  because  they  thought  she  was  a 
success.  He  told  her  that  he  wanted  nothing  less 
than  for  her  to  be  like  the  other  women,  that  he 
never  wanted  her  to  live  in  and  be  one  of  the  crowd, 

268 


IN   THE    SWIM 

but  only  to  be  herself,  her  own  brave,  delightful  self. 

"That's  what  Arthur  says."  (They  had  begun 
to  call  Panoukian  Arthur  during  their  few  days  of 
high  spirits.)  "He  says  youVe  got  to  be  yourself 
or  nothing.  And  I  don't  understand,  and  thinking 
makes  it  so  hard.  .  .  ."  She  did  not  want  him  to 
speak.  She  said,  "You  still  love  me?  You  still 
want  me?" 

And  there  came  back  to  him  almost  the  love  of 
their  wanderings,  the  old  desire  with  its  sting  of 
jealousy. 

For  three  days  after  that  she  never  once  spoke 
to  him. 

It  seemed  she  wrote  to  Panoukian,  for  he  ap- 
peared again  on  her  last  night  before  the  opening 
of  the  new  play,  and  was  there  when  she  returned 
from  the  dress  rehearsal.  She  shook  hands  with 
him,  made  him  sit  by  the  fireplace  opposite  Old 
Mole,  took  up  some  sewing,  and  said: 

"Now  talk." 

After  some  diffidence  Panoukian  began,  and  they 
came  round  to  "Lossie  Loses,"  the  last  weeks  of 
which  had  at  length  been  announced.  It  would  have 
run  for  two  years  and  two  months.  Panoukian's 
theory  of  its  success  was  that  people  were  much  like 
children,  and  once  they  were  pleased  with  a  story 
wanted  it  told  over  and  over  again  without  a  single 
variation. 

"The  public,"  said  Matilda,  "are  very  funny. 
When  they  don't  listen  to  you,  you  think  them  idiots ; 

269 


OLD    MOLE 

when  they  do,  you  adore  them  and  think  them  won- 
derful." 

"I  have  never  felt  anything  but  contempt  for  them 
for  liking  'Lossie  Loses,'  "  said  Old  Mole. 

"But  then,"  put  in  Panoukian,  "you  did  not  write 
it.  If  you  had,  you  would  be  persuaded  by  now 
that  it  is  a  masterpiece.  That  is  how  Harbottles 
are  made:  they  attribute  their  flukes  to  their  skill 
and  insist  on  being  given  credit  for  them." 

"I  often  wonder,"  said  Old  Mole,  "what  the  man 
who  wrote  it  thinks  about  it.  He  must  surely  know 
by  now." 

"He  must  be  dead."  Matilda  swept  him  out  of 
consideration  with  her  needle.  "I  don't  believe  any 
man  would  have  let  it  go  on  so  long  and  not  come 
forward." 

Panoukian  examined  the  ethical  aspect  of  the 
situation,  and  from  that  they  passed  to  the  discus- 
sion of  morals,  whether  there  was  in  fact  any  valid 
morality  in  England,  or  simply  those  things  were  not 
done  which  were  unpleasant  in  their  consequences. 
The  Ten  Commandments  were  presumably  the  basis 
of  the  nation's  morality,  since  they  were  read  pub- 
licly in  places  of  worship  every  Sunday  (though  the 
majority  of  the  adult  population  never  went  near 
any  place  of  worship).  How  many  of  the  Com- 
mandments were  closely  observed,  how  many  (in  the 
general  custom)  met  with  compromise,  how  many 
neglected?  Murder  and  the  more  obvious  forms  of 
theft  were  punished;  deliberate  and  wicked  fraud, 
also,  but  at  every  turn  the  morality  had  been  modi- 

270 


IN   THE    SWIM 

fied,  its  bad  admitted  to  be  not  always  and  alto- 
gether bad,  its  good  equally  subject  to  qualification. 
It  had  been  whittled  and  chipped  away  by  non-ob- 
servance until  practically  all  that  was  left  was  a  bad 
consisting  of  actions  which  were  a  palpable  nuisance 
to  society,  with  never  a  good  at  all. 

"Either,"  said  Panoukian,  "the  Jewish  morality 
has  never  been  suitable  for  the  Western  races  or 
they  have  never  been  intelligent  enough  to  grasp  its 
intention  or  its  applicability  to  the  facts  of  life  and 
the  uses  of  society.,, 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  use  so  many  long  words," 
said  Matilda. 

But  Panoukian  rushed  on : 

"I  can't  believe  in  the  justice  of  a  morality  which 
is  based  on  the  idea  of  punishment.  It  is  inevitable 
that  such  a  system  should  set  a  premium  on  skill  in 
evading  consequences  rather  than  on  right  action." 

"I  believe,"  said  Old  Mole,  "in  tolerance,  you 
can't  begin  to  hold  a  moral  idea  without  that." 

"Right,"  said  Matilda,  "is  right  and  wrong  is 
wrong.  I  always  know  when  I'm  doing  right  and 
when  I'm  doing  wrong." 

"But  you  do  it  all  the  same?"  asked  Panoukian. 

"Oh,  yes." 

"And  so  does  every  healthy  human  being.  So 
much  for  morality." 

"Don't  you  believe  that  people  are  always  pun- 
ished?" asked  Old  Mole. 

"Certainly  not.  There  are  thousands  of  men  who 
go  scot  free,  and  so  sink  into  self-righteousness  that 

271 


OLD    MOLE 

more  than  half  their  faculties  atrophy,  and  not  even 
the  most  disastrous  calamity,  not  even  the  most  ter- 
rible spiritual  affliction,  can  penetrate  to  their 
minds." 

'That,"  said  Old  Mole,  "is  the  most  horrible  of 
punishments  and  seems  to  me  to  show  that  there  is 
a  moral  principle  in  the  universe.  I  find  it  difficult 
to  understand  why  moralists  are  not  content  to  leave 
it  at  that,  but  I  have  observed  that  men  apply  one 
morality  to  the  actions  of  others  and  another  to  their 
own.  The  wicked  often  prosper,  and  the  righteous 
are  filled  with  envy  and  pass  judgment,  wherein  they 
cease  to  be  righteous." 

"My  father,"  said  Matilda,  "was  a  very  bad  man, 
but  I  was  fond  of  him.  My  mother  was  a  good 
woman,  and  I  never  could  abide  her." 

"It  is  all  a  matter  of  affection,"  quoth  Panoukian 
with  more  than  his  usual  emphasis. 

"I  agree,"  muttered  Old  Mole. 

And  all  three  were  surprised  at  this  conclusion. 
They  were  uneasily  silent  for  a  moment  or  two,  when 
Panoukian  departed.  Then  Matilda  rose  and  came 
to  her  husband  and  held  out  her  hand.  He  took  it 
in  both  his  and  looked  up  at  her. 

"Good  night,"  she  said. 

"Good  night." 

"Until  to-morrow." 

And  slowly  the  smile  he  loved  came  to  her  face. 
Warmed  by  it  and  encouraged,  he  said: 

"Is  anything  worrying  you?" 

The  smile  disappeared. 

272 


IN   THE    SWIM 

"No.  Nothing.  Fm  beginning  to  think  about 
things,  and  you.  It's  all  so  queer.  .  .  .  Good 
night." 

And  she  was  gone. 

He  attended  the  first  night  of  the  new  play.  Ma- 
tilda had  a  larger  part,  and  one  very  short  scene 
of  emotion,  or,  at  least,  of  what  passed  for  it  in 
the  English  theater  of  those  days,  that  is  to  say  it 
was  a  nervous  and  sentimental  excitement  altogether 
disproportionate  to  the  action,  and  not  built  into  the 
structure  of  the  play,  but  plastered  on  to  it  to  con- 
ceal an  alarming  crack  in  the  brickwork.  Matilda 
did  very  well  and  only  for  a  moment  let  the  scene 
slip  out  of  the  atmosphere  of  gimcrackery  into  the 
air  of  life.  She  did  this  through  defective  technique, 
but  that  one  moment  of  genuine  feeling,  even  in  so 
false  a  cause,  was  so  startling  as  to  whip  the  audi- 
ence out  of  its  comfortable  lethargy  into  something 
that  was  so  near  pleasure  that  they  could  not  but 
applaud.  It  was  an  artistic  error,  since  it  was  her 
business  to  be  as  banal  and  shallow  as  the  play, 
which  had  been  made  with  great  mechanical  skill 
so  that  it  required  only  the  superficial  service  of  the 
actors,  and,  unlike  the  candle  of  the  Lord,  made  no 
attempt  to  "search  out  the  inward  parts  of  the 
belly."  In  her  part  Matilda  had  to  discover  and 
betray  in  one  moment  her  love  for  the  foppish  hero 
of  the  piece,  and  being,  as  aforesaid,  wanting  in  her 
technical  equipment,  drew,  for  the  purpose  of  the 
scene,  on  her  own  imagination,  and  that  which— 

273 


OLD    MOLE 

though  she  might  not  know  it — had  possession 
of  it.  The  audience  was  startled  into  pleasure,  Old 
Mole  into  something  like  terror.  There  was  in  the 
woman  there  on  the  stage  a  power,  a  quality,  an 
essence— -he  could  not  find  the  word — on  which  he 
had  never  counted,  for  which  he  had  never  looked, 
which  now,  he  most  passionately  desired  to  make  his 
own.  He  Jcnew  that  it  was  not  artistry  in  her,  his 
own  response  to  it  had  too  profoundly  shaken  him ; 
it  was  living  fire,  flesh  of  her  flesh,  and  marvelously 
made  her,  for  the  first  time,  kin  and  kind  with  him. 
And  he  knew  then  that  he  had  been  living  on  theory 
about  her,  and  was  so  contemptuous  of  it  and  of 
himself  that  he  brushed  aside  all  thought  of  the  past, 
all  musings  and  speculations,  and  was  all  eagerness 
to  join  her,  to  tell  her  of  the  amazing  convulsion  of 
himself,  and  how,  at  last,  through  this  accident,  he 
had  recognized  her  for  what  she  was.  .  .  .  He 
could  not  sit  through  the  rest  of  the  play.  Its  arti- 
ficiality, its  inane  falsehood  disgusted  him.  He  went 
out  into  the  brilliantly  lighted  streets  and  walked 
furiously  up  and  down,  up  and  down,  and  on.  And 
the  men  and  women  in  the  streets  seemed  small  and 
mechanical,  utterly  devoid  of  the  vital  principle  he 
had  discerned  in  his  wife's  eyes,  voice,  gesture,  as 
she  played  her  part.  They  were  just  a  crowd, 
mincing  and  strutting,  bound  together  by  nothing 
but  the  capacity  to  move,  to  place  one  leg  before 
another  and  proceed  from  one  point  to  another  of 
the  earth's  surface.  He  had  that  in  common  with 
them,  but  nothing  else:  nothing  that  bound  him  to 

274 


IN   THE    SWIM 

them.  (So  he  told  himself,  and  so  truly  he  thought, 
for  he  was  comparing  a  moment  of  real  experience 
with  a  series  of  impressions  made  on  him  by  his 
surroundings.)  He  walked  up  and  down  the  glitter- 
ing streets,  streaked  with  white  and  yellow  and  green 
and  purple  lights,  and  the  commotion  in  him  waxed 
greater.  .  .  .  When  he  returned  to  the  theater  Ma- 
tilda was  gone,  and  had  left  no  message  for  him. 

He  found  her  in  her  bed,  with  the  light  on,  read- 
ing. She  had  undressed  hastily  and  her  clothes 
were  littered  about  the  room  in  an  untidiness  most 
unusual  with  her.  She  stuffed  what  she  was  reading 
under  her  pillow. 

"You  didn't  wait  for  me,"  he  said. 

"No.  I  didn't  want  to  see  anybody.  I  rushed 
away  before  the  end." 

"Anything  wrong?" 

"I  hate  the  theater.  I  hate  it  all,  the  people  in 
it,  the  blinding  lights,  the  painted  scenery,  the  audi- 
ence, oh!  the  audience!  I  don't  ever  want  to  go 
near  it  again.  It's  just  playing  and  pretend- 
ing " 

"The  piece  was  certainly  nothing  but  a  pretence 
at  drama." 

"Oh!     Don't  talk  about  it." 

"But  I  want  to  know  what  has  upset  you." 

"I  can't  tell  you.  I  don't  know  myself.  I  only 
know  that  I'm  miserable,  miserable.  Just  let  me 
be." 

He  had  learned  that  when  she  was  ill  or  out  of 
sorts  or  depressed  she  never  had  any  desire  left  in 

275 


OLD    MOLE 

her  but  to  curl  up  and  hide  herself  away.  At  such 
times  the  diffidence  inherent  in  her  character  seemed 
wholly  to  master  her,  and  there  was  no  rousing  her 
to  a  better  grace.  He  withdrew,  his  exaltation 
dampened,  and  repaired  to  his  study,  where  in  the 
dark  at  his  desk  in  the  window  he  sat  gazing  out 
into  the  night,  at  the  few  lighted  windows  of  the 
Inn,  and  the  bruise-colored  glow  of  the  sky.  He 
could  think  only  of  her  and  now  it  seemed  to  him 
that  he  could  really  lose  himself  and  live  in  her, 
and  through  her  come  to  love.  He  remembered 
how,  when  she  was  rehearsing,  he  had  asked  how 
she  was  progressing,  and  she  had  replied:  "I  shall 
never  get  it.  Either  the  part's  all  wrong  or  I  am." 
And  that  evening  she  had  ugot  it,"  reached  what  the 
author  had  been  fumbling  after,  the  authentic  note 
of  human  utterance,  the  involuntary  expression  of 
love.  It  had  alarmed  himself:  how  devastating 
must  it  then  have  seemed  to  her!  It  was  almost 
horrible  in  its  irrelevance.  It  came  from  neither  of 
them  and  yet  it  was  theirs,  but  not  for  sharing.  It 
had  driven  her,  like  a  beast  on  a  stroke  of  illness, 
to  hide  away  from  him,  but  through  her  and  only 
through  her  could  he  approach  it.  The  abruptness 
of  its  outburst,  its  geyser-like  upward  thrust,  made  it 
alone  seem  natural  and  all  their  life  of  habit  artificial 
and  shabby;  how  much  more  then  the  stale  and  out- 
worn tricks  of  the  theater !  He  approached  it,  wor- 
shiping, marveling  at  the  sense  of  release  in  his 
soul,  and  knew  that,  with  the  power  it  gave  him,  he 
had  bitten  through  the  crust  of  life,  whereat  he  had 

276 


IN   THE    SWIM 

been  nibbling  and  gnawing  with  his  mind  and  pick- 
ing with  the  chipped  flints  of  philosophies.  And  he 
was  awed  into  humility,  into  admission  of  his  own 
impotence,  into  perception,  clear  and  whole,  of  the 
immensity  of  its  life's  purpose,  of  its  huge  force  and 
mighty  volume  bearing  the  folly  and  turbulence  of 
mind  and  flesh  lightly  on  its  bosom,  so  that  a  man 
must  accept  life  as  to  be  lived,  can  never  be  its  mas- 
ter, but  only  its  honorable  servant  or  its  miserable 
slave.  He  had  then  the  sense  of  being  one  with 
life,  from  which  nothing  was  severed,  not  the  small- 
est bubble  of  a  thought,  not  the  least  grain  of  a 
desire,  of  possessing  all  his  force  and  a  boundless 
reserve  of  force,  and  he  whispered: 

"I  love." 

And  the  mighty  sound  of  it  filled  all  the  chambers 
of  his  life,  so  that  he  was  rich  beyond  dreams. 

He  laid  his  head  in  his  arms  and  wept.  His  tears 
washed  away  the  stains  of  memory,  the  scars  and 
spotted  dust  upon  his  soul,  and  he  knew  now  that  he 
had  no  longer  to  deal  with  an  idea  of  life,  but  with 
life  itself,  and  he  was  filled  with  the  desperate  cour- 
age of  his  smallness. 

For  a  brief  space  after  a  storm  of  summer  rain 
the  world  is  a  place  of  glowing  color,  of  flowing, 
harmonious  lines.  So  it  was  now  with  Old  Mole, 
and  he  discovered  the  charm  of  things.  His  habit- 
ual life  went  on  undisturbed,  and  he  could  find  pleas- 
ure even  in  that.  His  love  for  Matilda  reduced  him 
to  a  sort  of  passiveness,  so  that  he  asked  nothing  of 

277 


OLD    MOLE 

her,  gave  her  of  himself  only  so  much  as  she  de- 
manded, and  was  content  to  watch  her,  to  be  with 
her,  to  feel  that  he  was  in  no  way  impeding  her 
progress. 

She  showed  no  change  save  that  there  was  a  sort 
of  effort  in  her  self-control,  as  though  she  were  de- 
liberately maintaining  her  old  attitude  toward  him. 
She  never  made  any  further  allusion  to  her  avowed 
hatred  of  the  theater,  and  returned  to  it  as  though 
nothing  had  suffered.  He  told  himself  that  it  was 
perhaps  only  a  mood  of  exhaustion,  or  that,  though 
she  might  have  passed  through  a  crisis,  yet  it  was 
possible  for  her  to  be  unaware  of  it,  so  that  its 
effects  would  only  gradually  become  visible  and  very 
slowly  translated  into  action.  After  all,  she  was 
still  very  young,  and  the  young  are  mercifully  spared 
having  to  face  their  crises.  .  .  .  When  he  went  to 
see  her  play  her  part  again  she  had  mastered  her 
scene  by  artistry;  the  almost  barbaric  splendor  of 
her  outburst  was  gone;  she  had  a  trick  for  it,  and 
her  little  scene  became,  as  it  was  intended  to  be, 
only  a  cog  in  the  elaborate  machinery  by  which  the 
entertainment  moved. 

This  time  Panoukian  was  with  him,  and  de- 
nounced the  piece  as  an  abomination,  a  fraud  upon 
the  public — (who  liked  it  immensely) — and  he  pro- 
duced a  very  ingenious,  subtle  diagnosis  of  the  dis- 
eases that  were  upon  it  and  submitted  it  to  a  thor- 
ough and  brutal  vivisection,  act  by  act,  as  they  sat 
through  it.  Old  Mole  was  astonished  to  find  that 
Panoukian's  violence  annoyed  him,  offended  him  as 

278 


IN   THE    SWIM 

an  injustice,  and,  though  he  did  not  tell  him  so,  saw 
clearly  that  he  was  applying  to  the  piece  a  standard 
which  had  never  for  one  moment  been  in  the  mind 
of  the  author,  whose  concern  had  been  to  the  best 
of  his  no  great  powers  to  contrive  an  amusing  traf- 
fic which  should  please  everybody  and  offend  none, 
supply  the  leading  actors  with  good  and  intrinsically 
flattering  parts,  tickle  the  public  into  paying  for  its 
long-continued  presentation,  and  so  pay  the  rent  of 
the  theater,  the  formidable  salary  list,  and  provide 
for  the  satisfaction  of  his  pleasures,  the  caprices  of 
his  extremely  expensive  wife,  and  his  by  no  means 
peculiar  mania  for  appearing  in  the  columns  of  the 
newspapers  and  illustrated  journals;  pure  Har- 
bottling;  but  it  had  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  what 
Panoukian  was  talking  about,  namely,  art.  It  was 
certainly  all  out  of  drawing  and  its  moral  perspec- 
tive was  all  awry,  but  it  was  hardly  more  fantastical 
and  disproportionate  than  Panoukian's  criticism.  It 
was  entirely  unimportant:  to  apply  a  serious  stand- 
ard to  it  was  to  raise  it  to  a  level  in  the  mind  to 
which  it  had  no  right.  Of  the  two,  the  author  and 
Panoukian,  he  was  not  sure  but  Panoukian  was  the 
greater  fool.  However,  extending  his  indulgence 
from  one  to  the  other,  he  let  the  young  man  talk 
his  fill,  and  said  nothing.  He  had  begun  to  treas- 
ure silence. 

He  loved  the  silent  evenings  in  Gray's  Inn,  where 
he  could  sit  and  smoke  and  chuckle  over  the  world's 
absurdity,  and  ponder  the  ways  of  men  so  variously 
revealed  to  him  in  the  last  few  years,  and  gloat 

279 


OLD    MOLE 

over  his  own  happiness  and  dream  of  the  days  when 
Matilda  should  have  come  to  the  full  bloom  of  her 
nature  and  they  would  perfectly  understand  each 
other,  and  then  life  would  be  a  full  creation,  as  full 
and  varied,  as  largely  moving  as  the  passing  of  the 
seasons.  He  had  delightful  dreams  of  the  time 
when  she  would  fully  share  his  silence,  the  immense 
region  beyond,  words.  He  was  full  of  happiness, 
gummy  with  it,  like  a  plum  ripe  for  plucking — or 
falling. 

In  his  fullness  of  living — the  very  top,  he  told 
himself,  of  his  age,  of  a  man's  life — he  found  it 
easy  to  cover  paper  with  his  thoughts  and  memo- 
ries, delightful  and  easy  to  mold  them  into  form,  and 
to  amuse  himself  he  began  a  work  which  he  called 
"Out  of  Bounds,"  half  treatise,  half  satire  on  edu- 
cation, dry,  humorous,  mocking,  in  which  he  drew 
a  picture  of  the  members  of  his  old  profession  en- 
gaged in  hacking  down  the  imaginations  of  children 
and  feeding  the  barren  stumps  of  their  minds  with 
the  sawdust  of  the  conventional  curricula.  He  was 
very  zestful  in  this  employment,  perfectly  content 
that  Matilda  should  be  even  less  demonstrative  than 
before,  telling  himself  that  she  was  wrestling  with 
the  after  effects  of  her  crisis  and  would  turn  to  him 
and  his  affection  when  she  needed  them.  He  made 
rapid  progress  with  his  work. 

"Lossie  Loses"  came  to  an  end  at  last,  and  he 
counted  the  spoils.  He  had  gained  many  thousands 
of  pounds — (the  play  was  still  running  in  Amer- 
ica)— a  few  amusing  acquaintances,  a  career  for  his 

280 


IN    THE    SWIM 

wife,  and  an  insight  into  the  workings  of  London's 
work  and  pleasure  which  he  would  have  found  it 
hard  to  come  by  otherwise.  He  chuckled  over  it 
all  and  flung  himself  with  fresh  ardor  into  his  work. 

After  the  hundredth  performance  of  her  play  Ma- 
tilda declared  that  she  was  tired,  and  wanted  a  rest, 
and  she  threw  up  her  part.  She  came  to  him  and 
said  she  wished  to  go  away. 

"Very  well.    Where  shall  we  go?" 

"I  want  to  go  alone." 

And  she  waited  as  though  she  expected  a  protest 
from  him.  For  a  moment  she  gazed  at  him  almost 
with  pleading  in  her  eyes,  and  then  she  governed 
herself,  stood  before  him  almost  assertively  and 
repeated: 

"Alone." 

In  the  aggression  he  felt  the  strain  in  her  and  told 
himself  she  was  wanting  to  get  away  from  him,  to 
break  the  habit  of  their  life,  to  come  back  to  him 
fresh,  to  advance  toward  him,  reach  up  to  the  prize 
he  held  in  his  hands.  He  told  himself  that  to  break 
in  upon  her  diffidence  might  only  be  to  thicken  the 
wall  she — (he  said  it  was  she) — had  raised  between 
them.     He  said : 

"Won't  you  mind?" 

"No.     I  want  to  be  alone." 

"Where  will  you  go  then?" 

"I  don't  know.    Anywhere.    By  the  sea,  I  think." 

He  suggested  the  Yorkshire  coast,  but  she  said 
that  was  too  far  and  she  didn't  like  the  North. 

"Oh!    No!"  he  said.     "Want  to  forget  it?" 
281 


OLD   MOLE 

She  passed  that  by. 

He  took  down  a  map,  and  she  looked  along  the 
south  coast  and  pitched  on  a  place  in  Sussex,  because 
it  was  far  from  the  railway  and  would  therefore  be 
quiet.  He  left  his  work,  wired  to  the  hotel  for 
rooms,  sat  and  talked  to  her  as  she  packed,  saw  her 
off  the  next  morning  and  returned  to  his  work,  re- 
joicing in  the  silence  and  emptiness  of  the  chambers. 

He  sent  her  letters  on  to  her  without  particularly 
noticing  their  superscription.  On  the  third  day  a 
letter  came  for  her,  and  he  recognized  the  hand- 
writing as  Panoukian's.  He  sent  that  on.  When 
his  work  went  swimmingly  and  his  pen  raced  he 
wrote  to  her,  long,  droll,  affectionate  epistles :  when 
his  work  hobbled  then  he  did  not  write  and  hardly 
gave  a  thought  to  her.  She  wrote  to  him  in  her 
awkward  hand  with  gauche,  conventional  descrip- 
tions of  the  scenery  amid  which  she  was  living.  He 
read  them  and  they  gave  him  fresh  light  on  educa- 
tion. He  was  reaching  the  constructive  part  of  his 
work,  and  it  began  to  take  shape  as  an  exposition 
of  the  methods  by  which  the  essential  Matilda  might 
have  been  freed  of  the  diffidence  and  self-distrust 
which  hemmed  her  in.  That  brought  him  to  femi- 
nism, and  he  imagined  a  description  of  women  in 
Trafalgar  Square  screaming  in  a  shrill  eloquence 
for  deliverance  from  the  captivity  into  which  they 
had  been  cast  by  the  morals  of  the  sand  heap.  He 
wTas  keenly  interested  in  this  scene,  and,  as  he  had 
sketched  it,  was  not  sure  that  he  had  the  topography 
of  the  Square  exact. 

sit 


IN   THE    SWIM 

One  evening,  therefore,  he  dined  at  his  club,  mean- 
ing to  walk  home  by  the  Square  and  the  Strand. 
He  was  drawn  into  an  argument  and  did  not  set  out 
before  ten  o'clock.  It  was  one  of  those  nights  when 
heavy  clouds  lumber  low  over  the  city  and  absorb 
the  light,  break  the  chain  of  it  so  that  the  great  arcs 
are  like  dotted  lanterns,  and  behind  them  buildings 
loom.  He  turned  down  Parliament  Street  to  get 
the  full  effect  of  this  across  the  Square,  and  then  came 
up  across  and  across  it,  carefully  observing  how 
the  great  thoroughfares  lay  in  relation  to  the  Nelson 
Column.  As,  finally,  he  was  crossing  to  the  Strand 
he  was  almost  dashed  over  by  a  taxicab,  drew  back, 
looked  up,  saw  his  wife  gazing  startled  out  of  the 
window.  He  stared  at  her,  but  she  did  not  recog- 
nize him  and  seemed  to  be  entirely  absorbed  in  the 
fright  and  shock  of  the  avoided  accident.  He  fol- 
lowed the  car  with  his  eyes.  It  had  turned  sharply 
in  the  middle  of  the  road  to  pass  into  the  southward 
stream  of  traffic.  He  saw  it  slow  down  and  draw 
up  outside  a  huge  hotel,  and  hurried  after  it.  The 
porter  came  out  and  opened  the  door.  Matilda 
stepped  to  the  pavement,  and  after  her  Panoukian. 
They  passed  in  through  the  revolving  door  of  the 
hotel  just  as  he  reached  the  pavement.  The  porter 
staggered  in  with  Matilda's  portmanteau. 

Old  Mole  lunged  forward  on  an  impulse.  He 
reached  the  door  and  glared  through  the  glass.  The 
hall  was  full  of  people,  there  was  a  great  coming 
and  going.  He  could  see  neither  Matilda  nor 
Panoukian.     He  turned  and  walked  very  slowly 

283 


OLD    MOLE 

down  the  steps  of  the  hotel.  There  were  four  steps. 
He  reached  the  pavement  and  was  very  careful  not 
to  walk  on  the  cracks.  At  the  edge  of  the  pave- 
ment he  stopped  and  stared  vacantly  up  at  the  Nel- 
son Column.  Small  and  black  against  the  heavy 
clouds  stood  the  statue,  and  almost  with  a  click  Old 
Mole's  brain  began  to  think  again,  mechanically, 
tick-tocking  like  a  clock,  fastening  on  the  object  be- 
fore his  eyes,  and  clothing  it  with  associations. 

"Nelson  —  Romney  —  Lady  Hamilton  —  Lady 
Hamilton  —  Emma  —  Nelson's  enchantress — Nel- 
son," and  so  on  all  over  again.  .  .  .  The  action  of 
his  heart  was  barely  perceptible,  a  slow  beat,  a  buzz- 
ing at  his  ears.     "Nelson — Romney " 

He  stood  gazing  up  at  the  statue.  The  clouds 
behind  it  moved  and  gave  it  the  appearance  of  mov- 
ing. It  was  very  certain  that  the  sword  moved.  .  .  . 
"England  expects.  .  .  ."  He  gazed  fascinated.  A 
little  crowd  gathered.  Men  and  women  stood 
around  and  behind  him  and  gazed  up.  He  was 
aware  of  them,  and  he  said: 

"Idiots." 

But  he  could  not  move.  The  crowd  spread  over 
the  pavement  and  blocked  the  way.  A  policeman 
appeared  and  moved  them  on.  He  jostled  Old 
Mole. 

"Move  on,  there.  You're  causing  an  obstruc- 
tion." 

Old  Mole  stared  at  him  stupidly. 

The  officer  spoke  to  him  again,  but  made  no  im- 
pression.    Old  Mole  stared  at  the  hotel  as  though 

284 


IN   THE    SWIM 

he  were  trying  to  remember  something  about  it,  but 
he  did  not  move.  The  officer  hailed  a  taxi,  bundled 
him  into  it,  and  drove  with  him  to  the  police  station. 
In  the  charge  room  there  was  confabulation,  and 
Old  Mole  gaped  round  him :  the  furniture,  the  large 
men  in  uniform  swam  mistily  before  him.  One  of 
the  men  approached  him  sympathetically,  and  he 
heard  a  voice  say: 

"Can't  make  nothink  of  it,  sir." 

His  brain  fastened  on  that  as  expressing  some- 
thing that  it  was  trying  to  get  clear.  He  felt  a 
slight  relaxation  of  the  numbness  that  was  upon 
him. 

Another  voice  said: 

"What's  your  name?" 

"Name?"  said  Old  Mole. 

The  man  in  front  of  him  said: 

"The  Inspector  says:   What's  the  name?" 

"Panoukian,"  said  Old  Mole. 


VI 

OUT   OF   IT 

When  the  pie  was  opened,  the  birds  began 
to  sing. 

THE   QUEEN    OF    HEARTS 


VI 

OUT  OF  IT 

THE  name  acted  as  an  aperitive  on  Old  Mole's 
faculties,  he  opened  his  eyes  and  mouth  very 
wide  and  ate  his  breath  like  a  fish,  and 
began  eloquently  to  apologize  to  the  policemen  for 
the  trouble  he  had  given  them.  He  diagnosed  his 
condition  as  a  brief  suspension  of  the  reasoning 
faculties,  a  perfectly  normal  affliction  to  which  all 
men  were  liable.  The  policemen  listened  to  him 
stolidly  and  exchanged  slow,  heavy  winks,  as  to  say 
that  they  had  indeed  drawn  a  strange  fish  out  of  the 
sea  of  London.  Their  prize  was  soon  able  to  give 
a  coherent  account  of  himself,  and  they  let  him  go 
with  no  worse  than  a  request  to  pay  the  cost  of  the 
cab  in  which  he  had  been  brought. 

There  was  heavy  rain  when  he  reached  the  streets. 
The  people  were  coming  out  of  the  theaters  and 
halls,  scurrying  along  under  umbrellas,  darting  for 
cover,  wrestling  their  way  into  cabs  and  omnibuses 
and  Tube  stations.  The  streets  were  like  black  mir- 
rors, or  deep  sluggish  rivers,  with  the  lights  drowned 
in  them.  The  people  were  all  hurrying  to  get  out 
of  the  rain.  Old  Mole  was  indifferent  to  it,  and 
more  acutely  than  ever  was  he  visited  by  the  sense 

289 


OLD   MOLE 

of  having  nothing  in  common  with  them.  By  sheer 
force  of  numbers  they  presented  themselves  to  his 
mind  as  obscene.  At  one  point  he  was  caught  in  a 
crowd  and  so  offended  by  the  smell  of  warm  flesh, 
wet  clothes  and  heated  india  rubber  that  he  was  for 
a  moment  possessed  by  a  desire  to  strike  the  nearest 
man.  He  restrained  himself  and  walked  on.  In 
front  of  him  there  were  a  brace  of  marketable 
women  profiting  by  the  weather  to  display  their  legs 
up  to  their  knees.  His  mind  raced  back  to  the  Puri- 
tanism in  which  he  had  been  nurtured,  and  he  was 
filled  with  the  Antonine  heated  horror  of  women. 
.  .  .  All  the  way  home  he  was  beset  with  sights 
and  scenes  that  accentuated  his  disgust. 

It  was  not  until  he  reached  Gray's  Inn  that  he  was 
faced  with  the  pathetic  absurdity  of  his  situation, 
and  then  he  found  it  unthinkable.  There  was  not 
an  object  in  the  chambers  but  cried  aloud  of  Ma- 
tilda. She  had  made  the  place  beautiful,  changed  its 
tone  from  masculine  to  feminine,  and  she  was  there 
though  she  was  absent.  It  was  very  grim  and  hor- 
rible; like  coming  on  the  clothes  of  a  beloved  crea- 
ture of  whose  death  he  had  been  told.  He  played 
with  the  idea  of  death  voluptuously.  She  was  dead, 
he  told  himself;  his  own  end  was  not  far  off.  The 
shadow  of  it  was  over  the  place.  He  went  from 
room  to  room,  fingering  her  possessions,  touching 
the  stuffs  and  garments  he  had  last  seen  in  her  hands. 
He  opened  her  wardrobe  and  thrust  his  hands 
among  her  soft  gowns.  He  stood  by  her  bed  and 
patted  the  pillow  and  smoothed  the  coverlet.     He 

290 


OUT   OF   IT 

caught  sight  of  himself  in  her  mirror  and  told  him- 
self that  he  could  see  her  face,  too.  And  she  was 
very  young,  too  young  to  be  dead:  and  he  was 
startlingly,  haggardly  old.  §urely  the  end  could  not 
be  far  off. 

He  went  from  room  to  room,  picturing  her  in 
each  as  he  had  last  seen  her. 

He  pushed  his  mood  of  horror  to  its  extremity  so 
that  he  was  nigh  sick  with  it. 

All  night  in  his  study  he  prowled  round  and 
round.  He  locked  himself  in,  locked  the  outer  door, 
locked  all  her  rooms  and  pocketed  the  keys.  She 
would  not,  she  should  not,  come  back.  No  one 
should  enter.  The  obscenity  of  the  streets  clung  to 
him  and  he  could  see  his  situation  in  no  other  light. 
All  his  life  he  had  regarded  the  violation  of  mar- 
riage as  a  thing  so  horrible  that  it  could  only  happen 
among  monsters  and  therefore  so  remote  from  him- 
self as  to  find  no  place  in  his  calculations.  There 
was  a  certain  side  of  human  life  which  was  settled 
by  marriage.  Outside  it  was  obscenity,  from  the 
poison  of  which  marriages  were  impregnably  walled 
in.  The  walls  were  broken  down;  a  filthy  flood 
swamped  the  fair  city  of  his  dreams,  and  for  a  short 
while  he  was  near  mad  with  thoughts  of  lust  and 
jealousy  and  revenge.  He  knew  it  but  could  not 
away  with  it.  There  was  an  extraordinary  pleas- 
ure, a  giddy  delight  in  yielding  to  the  flood,  giving 
rein  to  the  long  penned  up  forces  of  the  animal  in 
him,  and  breaking  into  childish,  impotent  anger. 

Slowly  he  lingered,  and  he  began  to  imagine,  to 
291 


OLD    MOLE 

invent,  what  others  would  think  of  him — Robert,  his 
sister,  his  acquaintances  at  the  club,  and  there  was 
a  sort  of  pleasure  in  the  writhing  of  his  vanity.  He 
despised  himself  for  it,  but  he  wallowed  in  it. 
Never  before  had  he  seen  such  a  quantity  of  mud 
and  its  appeal  was  irresistible. 

When  at  last  he  crawled  out  of  it  he  sat  in  rueful 
contemplation  of  himself  and  went  back  to  the  cause 
of  it  all :  the  averted  accident  in  Trafalgar  Square, 
the  hotel  door  swinging — the  low-hanging  clouds, 
the  crowd,  the  Nelson  statue.  .  .  .  Nelson :  Emma. 
And  Old  Mole  laughed:  after  all,  there  were  dis- 
tinguished precedents,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  most 
of  the  friends  of  Julius  Cassar,  Hans  von  Bulow, 
George  II.  The  thing  had  happened  even  in 
Thrigsby,  but  there  it  had  been  only  a  tale  to  laugh 
at,  with  pitying  condemnation  for  the  husband  and 
a  sudden,  irrepressible  envy  of  the  lover;  envy, 
neither  more  nor  less;  he  felt  gratified  at  the  hon- 
esty of  this  admission,  though  not  a  little  surprised 
at  it.  It  was  like  a  thin  trickle  of  cold  water  upon 
his  fever,  invigorating  him,  so  that  he  struggled  to 
break  through  the  meshes  of  sentimentality  in  which 
he  had  been  caught.  He  broke  free,  and  to  his 
astonishment  found  himself  sitting  at  his  desk  and 
turning  over  the  closely  written  sheet  which  he  had 
left  on  the  blotting  pad.  He  corrected  a  serious  mis- 
take in  the  topography  of  Trafalgar  Square  and 
went  on  writing.  .  .  .  The  outcry  of  the  women 
against  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  sand  heap 
reached  up  to  a  noble  eloquence  in  which  were  de- 

292 


OUT   OF   IT 

clared  their  profound  pity  and  sympathy  for  the  men 
trapped  in  sensuality  and  habitual  vice.  They  de- 
clared their  ability  to  think  of  men  as  suffering  hu- 
man beings,  wounded  and  deformed  by  ignorance 
and  prejudice,  and  asked  only  for  the  like  true  chiv- 
alry from  men.  He  drained  the  vat  of  his  ideas 
dry,  and,  at  last,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  ex- 
hausted, he  went  to  bed. 

He  awoke  to  a  sense  of  novelty  and  unfamiliarity 
in  his  surroundings  and  in  himself,  welcomed  the 
new  day  with  the  thankfulness  of  health,  splashed 
lustily  in  his  bath,  jovially  slapped  his  belly  as  he 
dried  himself,  and  chuckled  at  its  rotundity,  re- 
garded it  as  a  joke,  the  private  particular  joke  of 
middle  age.  Almost  it  seemed  as  though  his  body 
had  a  separate  personality  of  its  own,  certainly  it 
had  many  adventures,  many  inward  happenings  of 
which  he  was  not  aware,  a  variety  of  processes  be- 
yond his  discernment.  That  amused  him  mightily. 
.  .  .  He  remembered  the  horrors  of  the  night.  It 
must  have  been  a  nightmare!  Of  course,  a  night- 
mare was  often  followed  with  a  feeling  of  health 
and  a  grotesque  humor! 

There  were  three  letters  on  his  breakfast  table. 
One  was  from  Matilda,  posted  the  day  before  at  the 
Sussex  village.  She  said  she  was  well,  though  the 
weather  was  bad,  and  she  was  getting  rather  more 
loneliness  than  she  had  bargained  for.  She  sent  her 
love  and  hoped  he  was  happy  without  her.  He  tore 
up  the  letter  and  burned  it,  and  turned  back  the 
thoughts  and  memories  it  had  summoned  forth.    He 

293 


OLD    MOLE 

applied  himself  hungrily  to  his  breakfast  and  took 
careful  note  of  the  process  of  eating,  trying  to  dis- 
cover why  it  should  be  pleasant  and  why,  slowly,  it 
should  take  the  zest  off  his  appetite  for  the  day's 
doings. 

"Queer,"  he  thought,  "how  little  interest  we  take 
in  the  body.  It  might  be  an  unfailing  source  of  en- 
tertainment. It  is  not  so  certain  neither  that  it  is 
not  wiser  than  the  mind." 

All  day  he  harped  on  thoughts  of  the  body  and 
was  fiercely  busy  scrubbing  his  own  clean  of  the  base 
ideas  of  the  night.  He  was  fairly  rid  of  them  at 
last  toward  evening,  but  his  mind  was  in  a  horrid 
confusion,  and  he  was  rather  alarmed  at  the  hard 
appearance  of  actuality  taken  on  by  his  body.  It 
blotted  everything  else  out.  He  saw  it  in  the  masked 
light  and  shade  of  dirt  and  cleanliness.  From  that 
he  went  on  to  the  other  seeming  opposites — life  and 
death,  love  and  hate,  vice  and  virtue,  light  and  dark- 
ness— found  so  many  of  them  that  he  was  semi- 
hypnotized  and  sank  into  an  unthinking  contempla- 
tion. There  was  good  and  there  was  bad,  two 
points,  in  the  catenary  of  which  he  was  slung  as  in 
a  hammock,  with  the  void  beneath.  .  .  .  Life  as 
an  exact  equation  was  an  impossible,  appalling  idea ; 
but  he  could  not  break  free  from  it.  He  could  not 
escape  from  the  trite  dualism  of  things.  .  .  .  From 
the  stupor  of  ideas  he  returned  to  his  body  and 
found  in  that  the  same  tyranny  of  the  number  two : 
he  had  two  eyes,  two  ears,  two  hands,  two  feet,  two 
lungs,  two  kidneys.     It  comforted  him  greatly  to 

294 


OUT   OF   IT 

reflect  that  he  had  only  one  heart,  one  nose,  one 
mouth. 

"Bah!"  he  said,  "I  am  making  a  bogey  of  my 
own  shadow." 

And  he  resolved  to  take  a  Turkish  bath  before 
dining  at  the  club.  He  did  so,  and  was  baked  and 
kneaded  and  pummeled  and  lathered  back  into  a 
tolerable  humor,  and,  as  he  lay  swathed  in  warm 
towels  and  smoking  an  excellent  cigar,  he  faced  the 
situation,  yielded  to  it,  let  it  sting  and  nip  at  his 
heart,  and  was  so  racked  with  its  pain  that  he  could 
form  no  clear  idea  of  it,  nor  struggle,  but  only  lie 
limp  and  pray  to  God,  or  whatever  devil  had  let 
such  furies  loose  upon  him,  that  the  worst  might 
soon  be  over  before  he  was  betrayed  into  any  brutal 
or  foolish  act.  He  was  amazed  to  find  that  his  van- 
ity had  been  slain :  it  had  died  in  the  night  of  shock, 
so  he  diagnosed  it.  No  longer  was  he  concerned 
with  what  other  people  would  think  of  himself.  The 
cruel  pain  twinged  the  sharper  for  it,  and  he  saw 
that  vanity  is  a  protective  crust,  a  shell  grown  by 
man  to  cover  his  nakedness.  .  .  .  His  general  ideas 
were  clear  enough:  and  the  amusement  of  them 
served  to  distract  him  in  his  agony.  It  tickled  him 
to  think  of  a  Turkish  bath  in  Jermyn  Street  as  the 
scene  of  such  a  mighty  sorrow,  and  said : 

"So  much  the  better  for  the  Turkish  bath.  It 
becomes  the  equal  of  Troy  or  Elsinore  or  the  palace 
of  Andromache,  and  nobler,  for  mine  is  a  real  and 
no  poet's  tragedy.  It  is  a  true  tragedy,  or,  my  van- 
ity being  dead,  I  should  not  bother  my  head  about  it. 

295 


OLD    MOLE 

...  Is  my  vanity  dead?  I  have  shed  it  as  a  crab 
his  claw  or  a  lizard  his  tail.  It  will  grow  again." 
He  sank  deep  into  pain  until  it  seemed  to  him  he 
could  suffer  no  more,  and  then  he  went  over  to  his 
club  and  dined  fastidiously — a  crab  (to  inspect  its 
claw),  a  quail,  and  a  devil  on  horseback,  with  a 
bottle  of  claret,  very  deliberately  selected  in  consul- 
tation with  the  head  waiter.  Throughout  his  meal 
he  read  the  wine  list  from  cover  to  cover  and  back 
again,  and  thought  how  closely  it  resembled  the 
Thrigsby  school  list.  It  contained  so  many  familiar 
names  that  he  was  put  out  at  its  not  including  Panou- 
kian's,  and  of  Panoukian  slowly  he  began  to  think: 
at  first  sleepily  and  in  the  gross  content  of  his  good 
dinner,  as  a  wine,  heady,  sparkling,  inclined  to  raw- 
ness, too  soon  bottled,  or  too  soon  uncorked,  he 
could  not  be  certain  which.  Then  he  thought  of 
Panoukian  as  a  man,  and  a  savage  anger  burst  in 
upon  him,  and  he  thought  of  Panoukian's  deed  as 
the  atmosphere  of  the  club  dictated  he  should  think 
of  it.  Panoukian  had  acted  dirtily  and  dishonor- 
ably: he  should  be  hounded  out,  hounded  out. 
Panoukian  had  wormed  himself  into  his  (Old 
Mole's)  affections  and  trust,  to  betray  both.  He 
had  shown  himself  a  cad,  a  blackguard,  a  breaker  of 
the  laws  of  hospitality  and  good  society.  .  .  . 
There  was  a  solid  plumpness  in  this  conception  of 
Panoukian  that  pleased  Old  Mole  almost  sensually, 
gave  him  the  same  sort  of  mouth-watering  anticipa- 
tion as  the  breast  had  done  of  the  quail  he  had  just 
eaten.    He  had  Panoukian  nicely  dished  up,  brown, 

296 


OUT   OF   IT 

done  to  a  turn:  he  would  poise  the  knife  for  one 
gloating  moment,  plunge  it  in,  and  cleave  the  ripe 
morsel  from  breast  to  back.  Panoukian  had  been 
cooked  by  his  own  actions:  he  deserved  the  knife 
and  the  crunch  of  teeth.  Old  Mole,  like  many  an- 
other good  man  wronged,  felt  ogreish.  .  .  .  He 
began  in  his  head  (and  with  the  aid  of  the  wine  in 
his  head)  to  compose  letters  to  Panoukian,  com- 
mencing "Sir"  or  "Dear  Sir,"  or,  without  approach, 
plunging  into  such  a  sentence  as:  "No  matter  how 
public  the  place,  or  how  painful  to  myself,  I  shall, 
when  I  next  meet  you,  be  obliged  to  thrash  you." 

And  he  gloated  over  the  thoughts  of  thrashing 
Panoukian:  mentally  chose  the  stick,  a  whippy  cane; 
the  fleshy  portion  of  Panoukian's  anatomy  under 
the  tails  of  his  too-much-waisted  coat.  He  rejoiced 
in  the  scene.  It  might  be  in  the  House,  under  the 
eyes  of  all  the  Harbottles:  or,  better  still,  in  the 
Temple  before  the  grinning  porters. 

He  was  brought  to  himself  by  a  crash  and  a 
tinkle.  He  had  waved  his  fork  in  the  air  and 
knocked  over  his  last  glass  of  claret.  The  head 
waiter  concealed  his  annoyance  in  fatherly  solicitude 
and  professional  business,  and  suggested  another 
half-bottle.  Weakly  Old  Mole  consented,  and  while 
he  was  waiting,  after  collecting  his  thoughts,  found 
that  they  had  left  Panoukian  and  come  to  Matilda. 
Her  image  was  blurred:  his  love  had  become  sor- 
row and  a  creeping  torment,  and  the  torment  was 
Matilda,  the  blood  in  his  veins,  inseparable  from 
himself.    And  because  she  was  inseparable  Panou- 

297 


OLD    MOLE 

kian  became  so,  too.  There  could  be  no  gain  in 
thrashing  Panoukian :  that  was  just  blustering  non- 
sense; "defending  his  honor"  was  the  phrase. 
Idiots !  He  looked  round  at  the  other  diners.  What 
was  the  good  of  defending  that  which  was  lost? 
What  was  there  to  defend?  You  might  as  well  ask 
a  sea  captain  whose  ship  had  been  blown  up  by  a 
mine  why  on  earth  he  did  not  use  his  guns.  .  .  . 
Further,  honor  was  a  word  for  which  he  could  find 
no  precise  meaning.  It  was  much  in  vogue  in  the 
theater,  from  Copas  to  Butcher.  A  woman's  honor 
apparently  meant  her  chastity.  A  man's  honor,  in 
some  very  complicated  way,  seemed  to  be  bound 
up  in  the  preservation  of  woman's,  as  though  she 
herself  were  to  have  no  say  in  the  matter.  No; 
honor  would  not  do:  it  was  only  a  red  herring 
trailed  across  the  scent. 

Next  came  the  cause  of  morality,  which  de- 
manded the  punishment  of  offenders.  To  his  con- 
sternation he  found  himself  thinking  of  the  affair 
impersonally,  pharisaically,  inhumanly,  detaching 
himself  from  Matilda,  thrusting  her  violently  away, 
giving  her  a  dig  or  two  with  the  goad  of  self-right- 
eousness, and  swelling  at  the  neck  with  conscious 
rectitude.  Why?  .  .  .  She  must  suffer  for  her 
sins. 

Sin?  Sunde,  pecker.  He  thought  of  it  in  three 
or  four  languages,  but  in  all  it  created  an  impression 
of  overstatement  and,  more,  of  bad  taste.  He  had 
lived  for  so  long  with  a  warm,  intimate  idea  of 
Matilda  that  he  resented  the  intrusion  of  morality, 

298 


OUT   OF   IT 

bidding  him  stand  above  her,  judge  and  condemn. 
It  might  be  simpler,  the  easiest  attitude  to  adopt — a 
suit  of  ready-made  mental  clothes,  reach-me-downs 
— but  it  was  uncomfortable,  cold,  and,  most  aston- 
ishing of  all,  degrading.  It  was  to  be  impersonal 
in  a  desperately  personal  matter.     Qa  ne  va  pas. 

Du  bist  wie  eine  Blume. 

So  rein  und  schbn  und  hold  .  .  . 

Like  nearly  every  lover  who  has  any  acquaint- 
ance with  the  German  language,  he  had  tagged 
Heine's  verses  on  to  his  beloved.  He  clutched  at 
them  now.  They  were  still  apt.  He  used  them  as  a 
weapon  with  which  to  drive  back  the  cause  of  mor- 
ality, but  he  was  still  very  far  from  the  mastery  of 
himself  and  the  affair — 1} affaire  Panoukian.  He  was 
the  victim  of  a  fixed  idea — the  taxicab,  the  hotel 
door  swinging  round,  the  low-hanging  clouds,  the 
Nelson  statue.  .  .  .  George  II  had  caused  the  death 
of  Konigsmarck,  but  his  sympathies  had  never  been 
with  George  II ;  besides  that  was  a  monarch,  and 
not  even  the  success  of  "Lossie  Loses"  and  his  ac- 
quaintance with  half  the  Cabinet  would  enable  him 
with  impunity  to  procure  the  death  of  Panoukian. 
Apart  from  the  defence  of  honor  and  the  cause  of 
morality,  what  do  men  do  in  the  circumstances? 

He  was  to  receive  instruction.  .  .  . 

In  the  reading  room  he  picked  up  an  evening 
newspaper.  It  was  pleasant  to  hold  a  tangible  ob- 
ject in  his  fingers  and  to  pass  into  the  reported 

299 


OLD   MOLE 

doings  of  the  great  and  the  underworld.  He  had 
heard  gossip  of  the  final  catastrophe  of  a  notoriously 
wretched  marriage.  The  divorce  proceedings  were 
reported  in  the  paper.  The  husband — Old  Mole 
knew  him  slightly  and  did  not  like  him — gave  evi- 
dence to  show  himself  as  a  noble  and  generous  crea- 
ture, near  heartbroken,  and  the  woman,  whom  his 
selfishness  had  driven  into  a  desperate  love,  as  light 
or  hysterical.  It  was  such  a  distortion  of  the  known 
facts,  such  an  audacious  defiance  of  the  knowledge 
common  to  all  polite  London,  that  Old  Mole  was 
staggered.  He  read  the  report  again.  One  sen- 
tence of  the  evidence  was  almost  a  direct  appeal  for 
sympathy.  Knowing  the  man,  he  could  picture  him 
standing  there,  keeping  his  halo  under  his  coat-tails 
and  donning  it  at  the  right  moment.  It  was  theatri- 
cal and  very  adroit. 

"Bah!"  said  Old  Mole.  "He  is  groveling  to 
the  public,  sacrificing  even  his  wife  to  the  many 
headed." 

And  his  sympathies  were  with  the  woman.  At 
least  she  had  shown  courage,  and  the  man  had  lied 
and  asked  for  admiration  for  it:  so  honor  was  de- 
fended and  the  cause  of  morality  served. 

A  little  knot  of  men  in  the  room  were  discussing 
the  case.    Their  sympathies  were  with  the  man. 

"If  a  woman  did  that  to  me,"  said  the  nearest 
man,  "I'd  thrash  her,  I  would.  Thank  God,  I'm  a 
bachelor." 

"I  don't  know  what  women  are  coming  to,"  said 
a  fat  little  man,  as  cosily  tucked  into  his  chair  as  a 

300 


OUT   OF  IT 

hazel  nut  in  its  husk.     "They  seem  to  think  they 
can  do  just  as  they  please." 

A  tall  thin  man  said: 

"It  all  began  with  the  bicycle.  Women  have  never 
been  the  same  since  bicycles  came  in." 

"It  wouldn't  have  been  so  bad,"  said  the  fat  little 
man,  "if  they'd  cut  and  run." 

And  Old  Mole  repeated  that  sentence  to  himself. 

"What  I  can't  understand  is,"  said  the  first 
speaker,  who  seemed  the  most  indignant,  "why  he 
didn't  shut  her  up  until  she  had  come  to  her  senses. 
After  all,  we  are  all  human,  and  that  is  what  I 
should  have  done.  If  women  won't  regard  the 
sacredness  of  the  home,  where  are  we?" 

"Surely,"  said  Old  Mole,  incensed  into  speaking, 
"it  depends  on  the  home." 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,"  retorted  the  nearest 
man  with  some  heat.  "It  does  not.  In  these  mat- 
ters you  can't  make  exceptions.  Home  is  home,  and 
there  is  no  getting  away  from  it.  If  a  woman  grows 
sick  of  her  home  it  is  her  own  fault  and  she  must 
stick  to  it,  dree  her  own  weird,  as  the  Scotch  say. 
Destroy  the  home  and  society  falls  to  the  ground." 

And  Old  Mole,  sharpened  by  argument,  replied: 

"Society  is  no  more  permanent  than  any  other 
institution.  Its  existence  depends  entirely  on  its 
power  to  adapt  itself  to  life.  It  is  certainly  inde- 
pendent of  the  innumerable  sentimental  ideas  with 
which  men  endeavor  to  plaster  up  the  cracks  in  its 
walls,  among  which  I  must  count  that  of  home." 

The  three  men  gaped  at  him.    He  continued: 
301 


OLD   MOLE 

"Home,  I  conceive,  has  a  meaning  for  children. 
It  is  the  place  in  which  they  grow  up.  We  make 
homes  for  our  young  as  the  birds  make  nests  for 
theirs.  When  the  children  go  forth  then  the  home 
is  empty  and  is  no  longer  home.  Men  are  no  longer 
patriarchs  and  no  more  do  they  gather  the  genera- 
tions under  one  roof-tree.  ...  In  the  case  under 
discussion  there  were  no  children,  therefore  there 
was  never  a  home  to  defend  or  regard  as  sacred. 
Man  and  woman  alike  had  placed  themselves  in  a 
false  position.  What  further  they  had  to  suffer  we 
do  not  know.  We  know  that  the  man  took  refuge 
in  the  closest  egoism,  and  the  woman  finally  in  the 
restless  adventure  of  which  we  know  no  more  than 
has  been  reported  to  a  newspaper  by  a  dull  and 
mechanical  shorthand  writer.  My  own  view  is  that, 
where  there  are  no  children,  society  at  large  is  not 
interested.  Society  is  only  interested  in  any  mar- 
riage in  so  far  as  it  will  provide  children  to  ensure 
its  continued  existence.  Once  children  are  born  it  is 
interested  to  see  that  they  are  fed,  clothed  and 
educated.  (How  effectively  our  present  society  pur- 
sues that  interest  you  may  easily  observe  if  you  will 
visit  East  or  South  London.)  Beyond  that  its  in- 
terference, explicit  or  covert,  seems  to  me  to  be 
an  unwarrantable  intrusion  into  the  privacy  of  the 
human  soul.  No  one  of  us  here  is  in  a  position  to 
judge  of  the  affair  which  is  the  occasion  of  your 
argument,  and  .  .  .  and  ...  I  beg  your  pardon 
for  interfering  with  it." 

He  rose  and  passed  out  the  room,  leaving  three 
302 


OUT   OF   IT 

very  surprised  clubmen  behind  him.  But  none  of 
them  could  be  more  surprised  than  himself:  sur- 
prised and  relieved  he  was.  He  had  been  sickened 
at  the  idea  of  a  woman  being  delivered  up  to  the 
chatter  of  idle  tongues,  and  in  the  violence  of  his 
distress  had  come  by  an  absolute  certainty  that  any 
dignified  issue  to  his  present  affection  could  only 
come  through  an  unprejudiced  and  unsentimental 
consideration  of  the  whole  facts.  It  was  not  going 
to  be  easy;  but,  dear  God,  he  wanted  something 
difficult,  something  really  worth  doing  to  counteract 
his  misery.  When  he  thought  of  himself  and  the 
ache  at  his  heart  he  was  blinded  with  tears  and 
could  see  the  facts  only  from  one  angle — his  own. 

Du  bist  wie  eine  Blume, 

So  rein   und  schbn   und  hold  .  .  . 

Seen  from  that  angle,  Matilda  was  reduced  in 
stature,  distorted,  ugly,  mean.  But  he  had  loved 
her,  loved  her,  and  must  still  have  the  truth  of  her : 
more  than  ever  before  he  needed  to  understand  her. 
The  beauty  and  delight  and  youth  he  had  enjoyed 
in  her  must  not  go  down  in  bitterness. 

One  saying  he  took  away  with  him  from  the 
club  : 

"It  wouldn't  have  been  so  bad  if  they'd  cut  and 
run." 

Perhaps,  he  thought  to  himself,  they  had  ucut 
and  run."  And  for  him  it  became  worse,  to  think 
that  she  had  gone,  without  a  word,  with  never  a  com- 

303 


OLD   MOLE 

plaint,  just  gone.  He  remembered  the  night  when 
she  had  said  she  was  miserable,  when  he  had  found 
her  in  her  bed,  after  the  play,  with  her  room  in  a 
litter.  And  he  fell  to  thinking  of  the  trials  he  must 
have  put  upon  her,  probing  for  all  the  possible  of- 
fences, secret,  subtle,  unsuspected,  of  body  and  soul 
that  might  be  laid  at  his  door.  There  were  many 
that  he  could  think  of,  but  his  darkest  hours  came 
then  when  he  perceived  the  fine  balance,  the  peril- 
ous poise  of  married  life,  the  imperceptible  dove- 
tailing of  interests  and  habits  and  humors,  the  re- 
gions beyond  perception  where  souls  meet.  Its  nice 
complications  were  almost  terrifying:  at  thousands 
of  points  men  and  women  might  fail,  offend  each 
other,  crush  each  other,  destroy,  never  dreaming 
of  the  cause,  never,  at  the  time,  marking  the  effect. 
For  such  an  adventure  there  need  be  heroism:  to 
break,  when  even  failure  and  offence  and  mutual 
exasperation  bind,  strength  and  courage  superhuman 
or  despairing.  And  men  judge!  And  condemn! 
They  measure  this  subtlest  and  most  searching  rela- 
tionship with  opinions  and  dull  compromise  and 
rules. 

He  was  tortured  with  the  thought  of  all  the  in- 
juries he  might  have  done  her,  and  he  invented  more, 
invented  burdens  that  he  had  never  put  upon  her  to 
account  for  her  going  away  from  him,  with  never  a 
word.  For  three  days  he  lived  in  this  torment,  wind- 
ing about  and  about  from  general  to  particular  and 
back  again  by  the  most  circuitous  route,  a  Rundreise 
with  the  current  morality  for  Baedeker.    And  every 

3°4 


OUT   OF    IT 

now  and  then  the  obsession  would  stab  home  to  his 
heart — the  hotel  door  swinging,  the  flat  infidelity. 
Once,  when  the  pain  was  so  mortal  that  he  could 
contain  himself  no  longer,  he  wrote  to  her  at  the 
hotel.  He  posted  the  letter.  That  was  on  the 
second  day.  On  the  third  he  was  in  an  agony. 
No  answer  came. 

On  the  fourth  day  a  telegram  arrived  from  the 
Sussex  village  and  an  hour  later  she,  brown,  healthy, 
with  a  grand  swing  in  her  walk,  a  new  depth  of 
bosom,  a  squarer  carriage  of  the  shoulders;  a  rich 
bloom  on  her.    She  kissed  his  cheek. 

He  stared  and  stared  at  her.  He  looked  for 
change  in  her. 

"You!" 

"Didn't  you  get  my  telegram?" 

"Oh  lyes." 

"I'll  take  my  things  off,  and  we'll  have  some  tea." 

She  left  him.  He  stood  at  the  head  of  the  little 
stairs  leading  down  to  her  apartments,  and  he 
trembled  and  was  near  weeping.  In  her  room  he 
could  hear  her  singing  to  herself,  happily,  blithely 
as  a  bird,  with  a  full  note  that  caught  at  his  heart. 
She  seemed  to  sing  no  song,  but  a  melody,  young 
ar  1  joyous  with  a  full  summer  gaiety.  The  sun 
snone  through  the  staircase  window  upon  his  hand 
where  he  clutched  the  balustrade.  He  was  gripping 
it  so  tight  that  the  veins  stood  out  and  the  skin  on 
his  knuckles  was  white.  A  tear  fell  on  his  hand  and 
he  looked  down  at  it.  It  was  a  plump,  podgy,  puck- 
ered middle-aged  hand. 

305 


OLD    MOLE 

He  whisked  back  into  his  room  as  he  heard  her 
door  open. 

They  had  tea,  and  he  could  not  take  his  eyes  off 
her.  She  thought  he  looked  ill  and  pulled  down. 
On  his  desk  she  saw  the  pile  of  his  papers. 

"You've  been  writing,"  she  said.  "You've  been 
overdoing  it.     It's  never  safe  to  leave  a  man  alone." 

"Yes,"  he  replied.    "I  have  written  a  good  deal." 

"Is  it  a  story?" 

"No.     Not  exactly  a  story." 

"Is  it  finished?" 

"No.    I  doubt  if  it  will  ever  be  finished  now." 

She  began  to  talk  of  the  theater.  She  had  been 
wired  for  to  resume  her  part,  as  her  understudy  was 
proving  unsatisfactory.  Further  she  had  had  two 
offers.  One  to  appear  in  a  new  musical  comedy,  the 
other  of  a  part  in  a  play  to  be  produced  at  a  little 
"intellectual"  theater  for  eight  matinees.  She  felt 
inclined,  she  said,  to  accept  both.  It  would  mean 
very  hard  work,  but  it  would  be  experience,  and  it 
was  flattering  to  be  noticed  by  the  superior  persons 
of  the  stage.  And  she  asked  his  advice.  He 
thought  it  might  be  too  much  for  her  to  have  so 
much  rehearsing  and  to  play  in  the  evening  as  well. 
That  she  brushed  aside.  She  was  feeling  splendid, 
strong  enough  to  act  a  whole  play. 

"You  are  becoming  a  regular  Copas,"  he  said. 

She  laughed;  he,  too,  and  they  plunged  into  re- 
miniscences of  the  old  days. 

"I  sometimes  think,"  he  said,  "that  those  were 
the  happiest  months  of  my  life." 

306 


OUT   OF   IT 

"Nonsense.  There's  always  more  and  more  in 
front" 

"For  you." 

She  went  off  into  peals  of  laughter,  for  she  had 
just  remembered  the  encounter  with  the  prize- 
fighter. Her  sturdy  gaiety  simply  swept  him  off 
his  feet,  and  he  could  only  follow  in  the  train  of 
her  mood.  They  made  so  merry  that  they  lost  count 
of  the  time,  and  she  suddenly  sprang  to  her  feet 
with  a  cry  and  scurried  away,  dinnerless,  not  to  be 
late  at  the  theater. 

"I  ought  to  have  told  her,"  he  said  to  himself. 
"I  ought  to  have  said:  'I  know/  .  .  .  But  how  fine 
she  looked!     How  happy  she  must  be!" 

Happy?  There  was  something  in  her  mood  be- 
yond happiness:  a  zestful  strength,  a  windiness  that 
seemed  to  blow  through  every  cranny  of  her  soul, 
whipping  the  blood  in  her  veins,  so  that  she  could 
not  pause  for  states  and  conditions  of  the  spirit, 
nor  check  herself  to  avoid  unhappiness  in  herself 
or  others.  She  was  like  a  ship  in  full  sail,  bending 
to  the  wind,  skimming  over  tossing  seas.  She  was 
gallant.  She  was  what  he  had  always  hoped  she 
might  become.  There  was  in  her  such  a  new  flood 
of  vitality  that  he  felt  ashamed  at  the  thought  of 
bidding  her  pause  to  submit  to  his  inquisition.  Im- 
possible to  check  her  flight,  cruel  suddenly  to  pre- 
sent her  with  the  meanness  of  what  she  had  done 
while  she  was  still  glowing  with  its  splendor. 

He  had  caught  something  of  her  glow,  and  now 
he  wrestled  to  break  free  of  rules  of  conduct  and 

307 


OLD    MOLE 

moral  codes,  and  he  began,  at  last,  to  consider  his 
problem  in  terms  of  flesh  and  blood.  There  were 
three  points  of  view  to  be  mastered:  three  lives 
knotted  together  in  a  tangle  and  the  weakest  strand 
would  be  broken. 

He  felt  hopeful.  There  would  be  a  fight  for  it, 
and  to  that  he  thrilled.  He  had  the  exaltation  of 
one  on  the  brink  of  great  discovery. 

He  went  to  fetch  her  from  the  theater.  The 
stagedoor  lay  at  the  back  in  an  alley  joining  two 
great  thoroughfares.  As  he  entered  the  alley  from 
one  end  he  saw  Matilda  and  Panoukian  leave  by  the 
other,  and  he  had  his  arm  in  hers.  Old  Mole  turned, 
with  the  fluttering  sense  of  an  escape,  glad  not  to 
have  met  them.  And  when  he  had  controlled  him- 
self he  was  amused  to  think  that  they  could  not  have 
dreaded  the  encounter  more  than  he. 

He  took  a  long  walk  to  delay  his  return,  and 
when  he  reached  the  chambers  they  were  in  dark- 
ness. He  crept  softly  down  the  little  stairs  and 
tried  her  door.     It  was  locked. 

In  a  moment's  panic  he  thought  that  this  time  she 
had  really  "cut  and  run,"  and  he  was  almost  stunned 
with  his  terror  of  it.  It  was  too  soon,  too  soon:  it 
would  be  disastrous;  he  would  be  left  without  un- 
derstanding, to  the  mercy  of  the  obsession;  he  had 
not  all  the  threads  in  his  hands;  until  he  had,  it 
would  be  rash  folly  to  snap.  He  stood  against  her 
door,  with  his  ear  to  the  panel,  holding  his  breath, 
straining  to  hear.     There  were  explosive  noises  in 

308 


OUT   OF   IT 

the  house.  From  the  room  he  could  catch  nothing 
for  them.  Closer  and  closer  he  pressed  to  the  door, 
his  ear  against  the  panel.  He  lurched  and  the  panel 
creaked.    Silence.    He  heard  her  stir  in  her  bed. 

She  was  there !  That  was  all  he  wanted  to  know. 
On  tiptoe  he  crept  away.  .  .  .  She  was  there !  He 
would  yet  gather  all  the  threads  and  then  he  or  she 
would  snap.     One  or  other  would  be  broken. 

What  had  he  then?  The  evidence  of  his  own 
eyes.  Was  that  not  enough?  It  was  enough  for 
prescribed  remedies,  to  which  he  could  not  resort 
without  revenge,  for  which  he  had  not  now  the  least 
desire.  What  his  eyes  had  seen  was  so  isolated,  so 
severed  from  the  rest  of  his  life  as  to  be  monstrous 
and  injurious.  By  itself  it  was  damnable  harlotry. 
(There  was  a  sort  of  boyish  satisfaction  in  fishing 
out  the  words  of  a  grosser  age  with  which  to  bespat- 
ter it  and  make  it  even  more  offensive  to  pure-mind- 
edness.)  But,  as  he  loved  the  woman,  it  could  not 
stand  by  itself.  He  was  in  it,  too.  Actions  cannot 
be  judged  by  themselves.  There  must  have  been  an 
antecedent  conspiracy  of  circumstance  and  fault  to 
lead  to  such  misdemeanor. 

With  a  tight  control  of  himself  he  could  now  al- 
most think  of  it  without  jealousy  (hardly  any  of 
that  was  left  but  the  quick,  shallow  jealousy  of  the 
brute),  but  he  could  not  think  of  it  without  pas- 
sion, and  through  that  he  could  discern  its  inherent 
passion  and,  faintly,  respond  to  it.  That  put  an  end 
to  all  mean  suspicions  of  a  conspiracy  against  him- 
self, or  of  cowardly  contriving  to  enjoy  stolen  fruit 

309 


OLD   MOLE 

and  leave  no  trace.  .  .  .  She  had  locked  the  door 
against  him.  So  much  was  definite,  and  he  had  a 
sort  of  envying  admiration  for  her  that  she  could  be 
precise  while  he  was  still  floundering  and  groping 
for  understanding.  .  .  .  Certainly  he  had  never 
seen  her  so  sure  of  herself. 

But  then,  if  she  were  so  sure,  why  did  she  not 
"cut  and  run."  Then  it  would  not  be  so  bad.  For 
a  flash  he  saw  the  thing  with  the  eyes  of  a  fat  club- 
man; the  passion  in  him  ebbed  and  he  lost  grip,  and 
blundered  into  a  mist.  A  lunge  forward  cleared  him. 
She  was  sure  of  herself,  so  sure  that  she  was  giving 
no  thought  to  her  position  except  as  it  immediately 
presented  itself.  The  new  factor  in  her  life  called 
for  no  change,  and  everything  she  had  was  en- 
riched by  it,  her  possessions,  her  work,  even  her 
domestic  life.  It  must  all  seem  to  her  clear  gain, 
and  therefore  she  was  sure.  She  loved  her  love,  and 
everything  that  had  led  to  it,  and  therefore  she  was 
sure. 

From  that  flight  upward  Old  Mole  came  to  the 
sensation  of  falling.  He  was  possessed  by  a  pre- 
vision, felt  that  in  a  moment  he  would  see  all  things 
plain,  would  know  exactly  what  was  going  to  hap- 
pen. He  strained  forward,  felt  sleep  overcoming 
him,  struggled  against  it,  and  fell  asleep. 

Then  Matilda  was  busy  all  day  rehearsing,  and, 
during  the  little  time  he  had  with  her,  she  talked 
the  slang  and  gossip  of  the  theater.  Once  she  asked 
after  the  work,  and  he  read  a  little  of  it  to  her,  and 

310 


OUT   OF   IT 

she  liked  it  and  he  plucked  up  courage  to  go  on  with 
it.  She  laughed  at  his  cuts  at  women  and  admitted 
that  he  had  thrust  home  at  more  than  one  of  her 
own  foibles.  He  had  written  part  of  a  chapter  on 
the  Theater  as  Education.  She  could  make  nothing 
of  that.  The  theater  to  her  was  a  place  in  which 
you  played  "parts,"  sometimes  good  and  sometimes 
bad,  and  you  were  always  waiting  for  the  supreme, 
all-conquering  "part"  to  turn  up.  She  did  what  she 
was  asked  to  do  to  the  very  best  of  her  ability;  that 
was  her  work  and  she  did  not  look  beyond  it.  The 
flattering  side  of  London,  its  pleasures,  fashions  and 
functions  had  fallen  into  the  background  and  she 
gave  it  just  the  attention  which  her  interest  seemed 
to  demand.  It  never  struck  her  as  strange  that  she 
should  be  given  no  more  of  a  play  than  her  own  part 
to  read,  and  if  she  had  been  given  the  play  would 
probably  not  have  read  it.  She  learned  her  part, 
movements  and  gestures,  cues  during  rehearsal,  and 
never  watched  any  scene  in  which  she  did  not  appear. 
By  her  part  in  the  "intellectual"  play  she  was 
mystified.  None  of  her  Copas  or  Butcher  tricks 
were  in  the  least  suited  to  it.  She  had  an  enormous 
part  to  learn:  all  talk,  gibes  at  marriage,  and  honor, 
and  wealth,  and  domesticity,  all  the  fetishes  of  the 
theater  in  which  she  was  beginning  to  find  her  foot- 
ing. The  manager  of  the  theater  was  his  own  pro- 
ducer; he  had  chosen  her  because  she  looked  the 
part,  "the  rising  temperament,"  he  called  it,  and 
he  added  to  her  bewilderment  with  the  invention  of 
elaborate  detail  to  break  the  flood  of  talk,  and,  in 

3ii 


OLD   MOLE 

the  absence  of  action,  to  bind  the  play  together. 
Everyone  in  that  theater  spoke  of  the  play  with 
awe,  so  she  concealed  her  perplexity  and  brought  it 
to  Old  Mole. 

"There  are  no  scenes  in  it,"  she  said.  "No  cues. 
Nothing  you  can  take  hold  of.  I  say  my  lines:  the 
other  people  in  the  play  don't  seem  to  take  any 
notice  of  them,  but  just  go  on  talking.  I  suppose  it's 
very  clever,  but  it  isn't  acting.  I  don't  believe  even 
my  uncle  could  do  anything  with  it." 

He  recommended  her  to  read  the  play,  and  she 
procured  a  copy  from  the  author.  When  she  had 
read  it  she  said: 

"I  know  why  nothing  happens  in  it.  There  isn't 
a  soul  in  it  who  cares  about  anybody  else.  It's  all 
teasing.  They  can't  do  anything  else  because  they 
don't  care.  And  they  have  nothing  really  to  talk 
about,  so  I  suppose  that's  why  they  discuss  the  Poor 
Law  Commission,  and  the  Cat  and  Mouse  Bill,  and 
the  Social  Evil  and  all  sorts  of  things  I  never  heard 
of." 

Old  Mole  read  it,  and  found  it  clever,  amusing, 
but  sterilizing  and  exhausting,  and,  in  its  essence, 
he  could  not  find  that  it  was  very  different  from 
"Lossie  Loses"  or  the  contrivances  of  the  Butcher 
repertory.  It  was  just  as  unimaginative.  It  had 
come  into  existence,  not  from  any  spiritual  need, 
but  entirely  to  rebut  Butcherdom.  Butcherdom 
shadowed  it.  The  author  in  writing  his  play  seemed 
first  of  all  to  have  thought  what  would  happen  in  a 
Butcher  entertainment  in  order  to  decide  on  some- 

312 


OUT   OF   IT 

thing  different.  He  had  not  moved  from  Butcher 
back  to  life,  but  had  run  from  Butcher  down  a  blind 
alley.  And  the  result  was  an  almost  brilliant  hotch- 
potch with  a  strong  savor  of  hatred  and  contempt 
and  the  tartness  of  isolation.  Contempt  for  Butcher 
might  be  its  strongest  motive,  but  alone  it  could  not 
account  for  it.  Old  Mole  sought  loyally  for  the 
best,  but  could  find  nothing  nobler  than  the  desire 
for  admiration.  The  author  was  not  scrupulous,  nor 
was  he  ingenious;  his  bait  for  reputation  was  the 
ancient  and  almost  infallible  trick  of  measuring  his 
cleverness  by  the  stupidity  of  others. 

It  lacked  theatrical  effectiveness  and  therefore  it 
was  impossible  to  get  its  meaning  or  even  a  drift  of 
it  into  Matilda's  head.  She  learned  her  lines  like 
a  parrot,  delivered  them  like  a  parrot — (thoroughly 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  producer) — looked  charm- 
ing in  her  expensive  gowns  and  attracted  the  notice 
of  the  critics.  The  author  told  an  interviewer  that 
his  play  was  a  masterpiece  of  its  kind,  and  that 
Matilda  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  actresses 
on  the  English  stage.  The  piece  ran  for  its  eight 
matinees  and  was  then  heard  of  no  more,  but  to 
Old  Mole  it  had  much  value.  It  set  him  wondering. 
The  stage  had  nothing  to  show  but  the  false  emo- 
tions of  Butcherdom  and  the  absence  of  emotion  of 
the  "intellectuals."  The  theater  must  express  the 
life  of  the  country  or  it  could  not  continue  to  exist, 
as  it  indubitably  did.  There  was  always  a  new  play- 
house being  built.  Money  was  poured  into  the 
theater  through  the  stagedoor  and  through  the  box- 

313 


OLD   MOLE 

office,  but  its  best  efforts  were  shown  in  childish 
fancy.  It  was  at  its  healthiest  and  least  odiously 
pretentious  in  the  presentation  of  melodrama,  with 
its  rigid  and  almost  idiotic  right  and  wrong,  its  stupid 
caricature  of  the  workings  of  the  human  heart.  If 
it  had  a  tradition,  melodrama  was  its  only  represen- 
tative. The  plays  of  Shakespeare  were  melodrama 
in  the  hands  of  a  man  of  genius.  Without  genius 
the  national  drama  was  heavy  and  lumpish,  stolidly 
clinging  to  unquestioned  and  untested  values,  look- 
ing for  no  higher  rewards  in  life  than  riches  and 
public  esteem. 

It  was  astonishing  to  Old  Mole  that  he  could  be 
so  deeply  interested  in  these  things.  He  had  ex- 
pected to  be  absorbed  in  his  sorrow  and  the  prob- 
lem of  handling  it.  Then  he  found  that  he  was 
testing  the  two  theaters,  the  Butcherish  and  the  "in- 
tellectual," by  the  passion  that  had  flamed  into  his 
heart  through  his  love  for  Matilda  at  the  moment 
when  it  had  been  outraged.  In  neither  was  there  a 
spark  to  respond  to  his  fire.  The  Butcher  theater 
was  a  corpse;  the  intellectual  theater  that  same 
corpse  turned  in  its  grave.  And  it  amused  him  to 
imagine  how  his  case  would  be  handled  in  them;  in 
the  one  it  would  be  measured  by  rule  of  thumb — the 
eternal  triangle,  halo'd  husband,  weeping  wife,  dis- 
comfited lover,  or,  if  violent  effects  were  sought  for, 
the  woman  damned  to  an  unending  fall,  the  two  men 
stormily  thanking  their  vain  and  shallow  God  they 
were  rid  of  her;  in  the  other  it  would  be  talked  out 
of  court,  husband  and  wife  would  never  rise  above  a 

3H 


OUT   OF   IT 

snarl,  and  lover  would  go  on  talking;  in  both  men 
and  women  would  be  cut  and  trimmed  to  fit  in  with 
a  formula.  In  the  one  the  equation  would  be  worked 
out  pat;  in  the  other  it  would  go  sprawling  on  and 
on  like  the  algebraic  muddle  of  a  flurried  candidate 
in  an  examination  who  has  omitted  a  symbol  and 
gone  on  in  desperate  hope  of  a  result. 

Old  Mole  had  discarded  formulae.  He  was  deal- 
ing with  a  thing  that  had  happened.  Judgment  of 
it,  he  said,  was  futile.  The  issue  of  it  depended  not 
on  himself  alone.  As  its  consequences  unfolded 
themselves  he  must  apply  the  test  of  passion,  grasp 
and,  so  far  as  possible,  understand,  and  let  passion 
burn  its  way  to  an  outlet. 

Familiarity  with  this  mystery,  straining  on  from 
day  to  day,  soon  made  it  possible  for  him  to  accept 
the  surface  happenings  of  life  without  resentment. 

For  her  part  in  the  musical  comedy  Matilda  took 
singing  and  dancing  lessons,  so  that  she  was  out  all 
day  and  every  day.  She  was  to  receive  a  salary 
twice  as  large  as  any  she  had  yet  earned,  and  would 
be  financially  independent  even  though  she  indulged 
her  extravagance,  than  which  nothing  was  less  prob- 
able. In  all  the  working  side  of  her  life  he  took  a 
very  comfortable  pride.  If  she  was  not  altogether 
his  creation,  at  least  he  had  helped  her  to  shape 
herself,  and  it  was  a  delight  to  see  her  character 
taking  firm  lines.  And,  as  he  watched  her,  he 
thought  of  the  current  sentimental  prating  of  moth- 
erhood and  its  joys  and  its  concomitant  pity  of  men 

315 


OLD    MOLE 

debarred  from  them,  the  absurdity  of  the  segrega- 
tion of  the  sexes :  as  if  love  were  not  in  its  essence 
creative;  as  if  it  had  not  begun  to  create  before  it 
reached  consciousness;  as  if  men  could  only  take 
the  love  of  woman,  as  in  a  pitcher,  to  spill  it  on  the 
ground;  as  if  love  were  not  always  beyond  giving 
and  taking,  reaching  out  and  out  to  create,  lifting 
half-formed  creatures  into  Being.  ...  By  the  side 
of  the  other  two  theaters  the  musical  comedy  stage 
seemed  almost  to  shine  in  candor,  and  he  was  glad 
that  Matilda — the  Matilda  of  his  creation — should 
pass  into  it  to  charm  the  chuckle-heads  out  of  their 
dullness. 

She  passed  into  it  gleefully  and  he  was  able  to 
separate  her  from  that  other  Matilda  in  whom  there 
was  a  passion  at  grips  with  his.  He  was  certain 
now  that  it  was  passion  and  no  vagary,  for,  day  by 
day,  under  her  working  efficiency,  she  gained  in 
force,  and  warmth  and  stature. 

For  five  weeks  Panoukian  had  made  no  appear- 
ance in  Gray's  Inn.  Then  one  day  he  came  with  a 
fat  Newfoundland  puppy,  a  present  for  Matilda. 
She  was  out.     Old  Mole  received  him. 

"Hullo!" 

<(Howdo!  sir." 

They  stood  looking  at  each  other,  Old  Mole 
holding  the  door  back,  Panoukian  hesitating  on  the 
threshold  with  the  puppy  in  his  arms. 

Old  Mole  thought: 

"I  will  speak  to  him.  I  will  tell  him  what  I  think 
of  him.     I  will  make  him  feel  what  he  is." 

316 


OUT   OF   IT 

He  said: 

"Come  in." 

"Are  you  alone?"  asked  Panoukian. 

"Yes.     Come  in." 

They  entered  Old  Mole's  study,  Panoukian  first. 

"She  said  she  wanted  a  dog,  so  I  brought  her 
this." 

Panoukian  put  the  puppy  on  the  floor,  walked 
over  to  the  cigarette  box  and  helped  himself. 

Old  Mole  opened  his  mouth  to  speak,  but  it  was 
dry  and  he  could  make  no  sound.  He  ran  his 
tongue  over  his  lips.     At  last  he  shot  out: 

"Panoukian!" 

Panoukian  was  pulling  the  puppy  from  under  the 
bookcase.  He  turned  and  faced  Old  Mole  with  his 
schoolboy  expression  of  wondering  what  now  might 
be  his  guilt.  He  looked  so  young  that  none  of  the 
words  with  which  Old  Mole  was  preparing  to  crush 
him — scoundrel,  traitor,  villain,  blackguard — was 
anything  but  inept.  He  was  just  engagingly,  re- 
freshingly young;  younger  than  he  had  ever  been, 
even  as  a  boy.  The  discontent,  the  hardness  and 
strain  of  revolt  had  faded  from  his  eyes;  they  were 
clear  and  bright.  He  was  as  fresh  as  the  morning. 
Plainly  he  had  no  thought  beyond  the  puppy  and 
the  pleasure  he  had  hoped  to  bring  with  it,  and  was 
startled  by  the  harshness  of  the  pedagogic  note  in 
Old  Mole's  exclamation,  startled  into  shyness. 

Old  Mole's  determination  crumbled  away:  his 
laudable  resolve  was  whisked  away  from  him.  He 
excused  himself  with  this : 

317 


OLD   MOLE 

"I  have  no  right  to  speak  to  him  before  I  have 
come  to  an  understanding  with  her." 

There  was  embarrassment  between  them,  the  awk- 
wardness of  master  and  pupil.  To  bridge  it  he 
said: 

"It  is  a  long  time  since  you  have  been  to  see  us.1* 

Directly  he  had  said  it  he  knew  that  he  had  con- 
tributed to  their  deception,  but  while  he  was  seeking 
a  means  of  withdrawal  Panoukian  pounced  on  his 
opportunity  and  dragged  their  three-cornered  rela- 
tionship back  to  the  old  footing:  and  Old  Mole 
could  not  altogether  disguise  his  relief. 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "I've  been  so  busy.  Old  Har- 
bottle  is  running  a  private  ball,  and  there's  been  a 
tremendous  lot  of  work  up  and  down  the  country." 

"Up  and  down  the  country,"  repeated  Old  Mole. 

"Yes.  Harbottle's  beginning  to  listen  to  what  I 
say.  I've  been  giving  him  some  telling  questions 
lately,  and  he's  already  cornered  the  Front  Bench 
twice.  .  .  .  The  old  idiot  is  beginning  to  discover 
the  uses  of  impersonal  unpopularity  as  an  instru- 
ment of  success.  He  would  never  have  taken  the 
plunge  by  himself,  and  he's  very  grateful  to  me." 

"So  you  are  beginning  to  do  something?" 

"You  can't  do  much  in  politics.  I  used  to  think 
you  could.  You  can't  do  first-rate  things,  but  I'm 
beginning  to  realize  that  it's  a  second-rate  job." 
He  grinned.  "The  odd  thing  is  that,  since  I  real- 
ized that,  I'm  getting  quite  to  like  old  Harbottle. 
He's  second-rate.  He  doesn't  know  it,  of  course, 
because  he  hasn't  the  least  notion  of  what  a  first- 

318 


OUT   OF    IT 

rate  man  is  like.  He  is  perfectly  cast-iron  second- 
rate.  Most  surprising  of  all  is  that  I  am  beginning 
to  see  that  every  man  has  the  right  to  be  himself — 
subject,  of  course,  to  every  other  man's  right  to  kick 
him  for  it." 

"Eh?" 

Old  Mole  was  startled.  Tolerance  was  the  last 
thing  he  expected  from  Panoukian;  it  was  entirely 
out  of  keeping  with  his  boyishness.  He  waited  for 
more,  but  nothing  came;  and  this  was  the  most 
astonishing  of  all,  for  there  Panoukian  sat,  boyish, 
glistening  with  youth,  enunciating  a  maxim  of  toler- 
ance, and  actually  relishing  silence.  Panoukian, 
having  nothing  more  to  say,  was  content  to  say 
nothing!  ...  It  was  too  bad.  Almost  it  seemed 
that  he  had  gone  through  all  his  misery  for  nothing. 
He  had  striven  to  master  his  situation  only  at  every 
turn  to  be  met  with  the  triumph  of  the  unexpected. 
He  had  decided  to  start  by  seeing  the  affair  from 
Matilda's  point  of  view  and  Panoukian's,  and  now, 
ludicrously,  maddeningly,  they  had  both  changed, 
and  both,  apparently,  were  being  intent  on  showing 
an  amicable  front  to  him.  They  were — and  he 
writhed  at  the  thought — they  were  trying  to  spare 
his  feelings. 

An  admirable  maxim  that!  Panoukian,  of  course, 
had  every  right  to  be  Panoukian;  ergo,  if  needs 
must,  to  change  into  another  Panoukian.  The 
young  man's  placid,  contented,  comfortably  ab- 
sorbed silence  was  exasperating. 

"Panoukian!"  said  Old  Mole. 

319 


OLD    MOLE 

Panoukian  groped  out  of  his  silence. 

uYes,  sir*" 

(Ludicrously  boylike  he  looked,  all  wide-eyed, 
deliberate  innocence.) 

"There  is  a  passage  in  Montaigne  which,  I  think, 
excellently  illustrates  the  observation  you  made 
some  time  ago.  It  is  over  there  at  the  end  of  the 
bookcase.,, 

Panoukian  rose  and  strolled  over  to  the  shelf 
indicated,  his  back  toward  Old  Mole,  who  sprang 
to  his  feet,  strode,  breathing  heavily,  glared  fixedly 
at  the  round  apex  of  the  angle  of  Panoukian  and 
lunged  out  in  a  lusty  kick.  The  young  man  pitched 
forward,  righted  himself,  and  swung  round,  with 
his  hand  soothing  the  coat-tail-covered  portion  of  his 
body. 

"Why  the  Hell  did  you  do  that?"  he  grunted. 

"To  illustrate  your  maxim,"  said  Old  Mole,  "and 
also  to  relieve  my  feelings." 

"If  you  weren't  who  you  are  and  what  you  are," 
retorted  Panoukian  sharply,  "I  should  knock  you 
down." 

To  that  Old  Mole  could  not  find  the  apt  reply, 
and  once  again,  ruefully,  he  was  forced  to  see  that 
he  had  been  betrayed  into  an  absurdity.  In  that 
moment  he  hated  Panoukian  more  than  anyone  he 
had  ever  known.  He  had  been  whirled  by  the  un- 
expectedness of  Panoukian  into  throwing  away  his 
one  flawless  weapon,  his  dignity,  and  without  it  he 
was  powerless.  Without  it  he  could  not  even  draw  on 
the  prescribed  attitudes  and  remedies  for  gentlemen 

320 


OUT   OF   IT 

in  his  position.  All  the  same  he  was  thoroughly 
pleased  to  have  caused  Panoukian  pain,  and  hoped 
he  would  be  forced  to  take  his  meals  from  the 
mantelpiece  for  a  day  or  two. 

They  stood  glaring  at  each  other,  both  wondering 
what  would  happen  next.  Panoukian  retired  grace- 
fully from  the  conflict  by  stooping  to  pick  up  the 
puppy.  Old  Mole  snorted,  grabbed  his  hat,  and 
stumped  away  and  out  of  the  chamber. 

The  callousness  of  Panoukian!  The  effrontery! 
That  he  should  dare  to  show  his  face,  and  such  an 
unabashed,  innocent  face !  Where  was  that  con- 
science which  makes  cowards  of  us  all?  .  .  .  At 
any  rate,  thought  Old  Mole,  after  being  kicked 
Panoukian  would  not  venture  to  appear  again.  But 
was  that  so  sure?  Was  it  so  certain  that  his  un- 
premeditated act  of  violence  would  jolt  Panoukian's 
conscience  into  activity?  Having  swallowed  the  in- 
dignity of  his  position,  would  he  not  the  more  easily 
be  able  to  digest  affront  and  insult  and  humiliation? 
How  if  the  kick  had  not  settled  the  affair  Panou- 
kian? 

From  his  own  uneasiness  and  almost  shame  Old 
Mole  knew  that  it  had  not,  that  possibly  it  might 
have  only  the  effect  of  crystallizing  the  change  of 
relation  between  himself  and  Panoukian,  of  obliter- 
ating the  tie  of  affection,  of  equalizing  matters,  of 
slackening  the  rein  on  Panoukian,  of  releasing  him 
from  every  other  claim  upon  his  affection,  except  the 
violent  outpouring  of  love  which  had  swept  him  into 

321 


OLD   MOLE 

disregard  for  convention,  and  honor,  and  the  cause 
of  morality.  If  there  be  degradation  in  violence,  it 
affects  the  kicker  as  well  as  the  kicked.  Old  Mole 
found  himself  very  near  understanding  Panoukian. 
Clearly  he  had  come  to  the  chambers  on  an  impulse. 
Matilda  had  desired  a  dog,  he  had  seen  the  very 
dog,  and  come  racing  with  it.  Encountering  Old 
Mole  for  the  first  time  since  the  eruption  in  their 
affairs,  he  had  carried  the  scene  through  with  an 
admirable  candor.  There  was  no  shiftiness  in  him, 
nor  slyness:  that  would  have  been  horrible,  the 
sure  indication  of  a  beastly  intrigue.  No:  either 
Panoukian  was  so  possessed  by  his  emotions,  by  the 
joy  of  what  was  probably  his  first  full  affair  of  the 
heart,  that  he  could  give  no  thought  either  to  his 
own  position  or  Matilda's  or  her  husband's;  either 
that  or  he  was  so  intent  on  his  passion,  so  absorbed 
by  it,  as  to  be  lifted  beyond  scruples  or  thought  of 
impediment,  and  was  tearing  away  like  a  bolting 
horse,  regardless  of  the  cart  behind  or  the  cart's 
occupants.  In  either  case  Old  Mole  felt  that  he 
had  something  definite  to  deal  with,  genuine  feeling 
and  no  farded  copy  of  it.  And  he  felt  sorry  for 
the  kick  and  wished  he  could  withdraw  it. 

The  very  next  day  Panoukian  came  to  dinner  at 
half-past  six.  Matilda  brought  him.  They  had  met 
by  chance  in  the  Strand,  and  she  had  persuaded  him 
to  come  back  with  her. 

The  meal  was  to  all  appearances  like  hundreds  of 
others  they  three  had  had  together.  Old  Mole  sat 
at  the  head  of  the  table,  with  Matilda  on  one  side 

322 


OUT   OF   IT 

of  him,  Panoukian  on  the  other,  and  he  watched 
them.  They  did  not  watch  him.  They  grinned  at 
each  other  like  happy  children,  and  made  absurd 
jokes  and  teased,  and  their  most  ordinary  remarks 
seemed  to  have  a  secret  and  profound  meaning  for 
them.  Sometimes  they  explained  their  references  to 
Old  Mole,  and  then  it  was  always  "We" — Panou- 
kian said:  "We,"  Matilda:  "Arthur  and  I"  .  .  . 
and  beneath  all  their  talk  there  seemed  to  be  a 
game,  but  a  game  in  all  seriousness,  of  fitting  their 
personalities  together.  Every  now  and  then,  when 
they  were  filled  with  a  bubbling  consciousness  of 
their  wealth,  they  would  throw  a  scrap  to  Old  Mole 
out  of  sheer  lavishness  and  babyish  generosity.  But 
other  thought  for  or  of  him  they  had  obviously 
none.  They  were  not  embarrassed  by  his  presence, 
nor,  to  his  amazement,  was  he  by  theirs.  Only 
he  was  distressed,  when  they  threw  him  a  scrap 
of  their  happiness,  to  find  that  he  knew  not  what 
to  do  with  it,  and  could  only  put  it  away  for 
analysis. 

"I  analyze  and  analyze,"  he  thought,  "and  there 
are  they  with  the  true  gold  in  their  hands,  hardly 
knowing  it  for  precious  metal." 

Oh,  yes!  They  were  in  love,  and  they  had  no 
right  to  be  in  love,  and  it  was  his  duty  to  put  an 
end  to  it. 

But  how? 

He  could  only  say:  "This  woman  is  my  wife. 
I  forbid  her  to  explore  any  region  of  life  which  I 
cannot  enter.    She  has  no  entity  apart  from  me ;  her 

323 


OLD    MOLE 

personality  can  find  no  food  except  what  I  am  able 
or  choose  to  provide  for  her." 

That  was  impossible,  for  it  was  not  true. 

More  humanly  he  might  say: 

"I  can  understand  that  you  love  each  other.  But 
I  cannot  condone  the  selfishness  it  has  led  you  to,  or 
the  secrecy.     .  .  ." 

There  he  stopped.  There  was  no  secrecy.  They 
were  disguising  nothing.  They  did  not  tell  him 
because  their  intimacy  was,  as  yet,  so  preciously 
private  an  affair  that  it  could  not  bear  talking 
of;  and  he  bowed  to  that  and  respected  their 
reticence. 

Matilda  went  to  tidy  her  hair  and  he  was  left 
alone  with  Panoukian.  They  could  find  nothing  to 
say  to  each  other.  The  minds  of  both  were  full  of 
the  woman.  Without  her  they  fell  apart,  each  into 
his  separate  world.  And  Old  Mole  knew  that 
the  issue  of  the  adventure  lay  with  her,  and  he  knew 
that  Panoukian  looked  for  no  issue  and  was  living 
blindly  in  the  present.    He  felt  sorry  for  Panoukian. 

The  evening  papers  were  thrust  through  the  door. 
Panoukian  fetched  them  and  gave  them  to  his  host. 
The  largest  event  of  the  day  was  the  grave  illness 
of  Sir  Robert  Wherry. 

"Dear,  dear,"  said  Old  Mole. 

"I  shouldn't  have  thought  he  was  human  enough 
to  be  ill,"  said  Panoukian. 

"It  is  ptomaine  poisoning,  set  up  by  a  surfeit  of 
oysters." 

"There'll   be   a   terrific   funeral.     He   was   the 

324 


OUT   OF   IT 

greatest  of  Harbottlers.  He  loved  the  public  and 
his  love  was  requited." 

And  Old  Mole  thought  of  that  other  Harbottler 
who  had  so  loved  the  public  that  he  had  trampled 
his  wife  in  the  mud  to  retain  its  esteem. 

Matilda  returned: 

"Who's  coming  to  the  theater  with  me?"  she  said, 
and  her  eyes  lighted  on  Panoukian  and  she  gave  him 
a  smile  more  profound,  more  subtle,  more  tenderly 
humorous  than  any  she  had  ever  bestowed  on  Old 
Mole.  Both  men  rose.  Old  Mole  reached  the  door 
first.  With  graceful  generosity  Panoukian  bowed, 
yielded  his  claim,  kissed  Matilda's  hand,  and  took 
them  to  the  door.  Old  Mole  went  first.  Halfway 
down  the  stairs  Matilda  turned: 

"Oh!  Arthur,"  she  said,  "the  puppy's  a  perfect 
darling." 

As  coarse  men  take  to  drink,  or  philandering,  or 
tobacco,  to  relieve  the  strain  of  existence,  so  Old 
Mole  took  to  work.  His  "Out  of  Bounds"  (Lieber- 
mann,  pp.  453,  75.  6d.  net)  is  a  long  book,  but  it 
was  written,  revised,  corrected  in  proof  and  pub- 
lished within  six  months.  It  was  boomed,  and  lay, 
unread,  on  every  one's  drawing-room  table.  He 
received  letters  about  it  from  many  interesting  per- 
sonages, and  from  his  sickbed  Robert  Wherry  gave 
it  his  pontifical  blessing.  The  Secretary  of  State 
for  Education  asked  Old  Mole  to  dinner,  and  de- 
clared sympathy  with  the  criticism  of  the  prevailing 
system,  but  shook  his  head  dubiously  over  the  prob- 

325 


OLD   MOLE 

ability  of  his  department  taking  any  intelligent  in^ 
terest  in  it. 

"I  quite  agree/'  he  said,  "that  you  ought  to  get 
at  children  through  their  imaginations,  but  imagina- 
tion isn't  exactly  a  conspicuous  quality  of  govern- 
ment departments." 

"Then  I  don't  see  how  you  can  govern,"  said  Old 
Mole. 

"We  don't,"  said  the  Secretary  of  State.  "We 
take  orders,  like  everybody  else,  but  we  are  in  a 
position  to  pretend  that  we  are  giving  them.  A 
government  department  is  a  great  wheel  going  round 
very,  very  slowly,  shedding  regulations  upon  the 
place  beneath.  Every  now  and  then,  when  none  of 
the  permanent  officials  is  looking,  an  intelligent  man 
can  slip  a  real  provision  into  the  feeder  and  trust  to 
luck  for  its  finding  the  right  need  and  the  right 
place.  .  .  .  But  it  is  not  often  we  have  the  advan- 
tage of  such  thoroughly  informed  criticism,  Mr. 
Beenham.  The  country  is  lamentably  little  inter- 
ested in  education,  considering  how  much  it  has  suf- 
fered from  it." 

"I  have  suffered  from  it." 

He  was  amused  by  his  celebrity.  Every  little 
group  had  a  cast  for  him,  but  none  of  their  bait 
attracted  him  in  the  least.  He  preferred  to  swim  in 
his  own  waters,  leisurely,  painfully  in  the  wake  of 
Panoukian  and  Matilda.  They  at  least  knew  where 
they  were  going,  were  possessed  by  an  immediate 
object.    Where  all  the  politicians  and  scribes  were 

326 


OUT   OF   IT 

looking  away  from  their  own  lives  toward  a  reor- 
ganized society  based  on  a  change  in  humanity,  a 
change  not  in  degree  but  in  kind,  Panoukian  and 
Matilda  were  changing,  growing,  responding  to 
natural  necessity.  They  were  loving,  loving  them- 
selves, loving  life,  their  bodies,  their  minds,  every- 
thing that  body  and  mind  could  apprehend. 

"There  is  no  social  problem,"  said  Old  Mole, 
♦'there  is  only  the  moral  problem,  and  that  is  settled 
by  the  act  of  living,  or  left  in  a  greater  tangle  by  the 
refusal  to  live." 

One  night  as  he  returned  home  from  a  dinner  at 
a  literary  and  artistic  club  he  stood  at  the  head  of 
the  little  stairs  looking  down  into  the  darkness.  He 
was  filled  with  regret  for  the  past  that  had  contained 
so  much  pleasantness  and  appalled  by  the  vision  of 
the  future  stretching  on  without  Matilda,  for  it 
would  be  without  her  though  she  stayed  under  his 
roof.  Between  the  theater  and  the  other  she  gave 
so  much  that  she  had  very  little  left  for  him — so 
little:  gentleness  and  kindness  and  consideration, 
things  which  it  were  almost  kinder  not  to  give.  It 
were  best,  he  thought,  that  she  should  go  and  make 
her  own  life,  with  or  without  the  other.  She  had  her 
career,  her  work:  friends  she  would  always  make, 
acquaintances  she  could  always  have  in  abundance. 
.  .  .  And  yet  she  stayed.  He  had  felt  dependent 
on  her  for  the  solution,  for  the  proof,  as  it  were, 
that  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  are  equal  to  two 
right  angles.    But  she  stayed.    There  must  then  be 

327 


OLD    MOLE 

something  that  she  treasured  in  her  life  with 
him.  .  .  .  And  he  was  curious  to  know  what  it 
might  be.  Almost  before  he  was  aware  of  it  he  was 
down  the  little  stairs  and  at  her  door,  listening,  and 
he  was  chilled  with  pity.  She  was  weeping,  and 
smothering  the  sound  of  it. 

"Poor  child!"  he  thought. 

And  he  tapped  lightly  at  her  door.  No  sound. 
Again  he  tapped.    She  came  then. 

"I  heard  you,"  he  said.  "It  was  more  than  I 
could  bear." 

She  led  him  into  her  room  and  made  him  sit  on 
her  bed  as  she  slithered  into  it  again.  She  would 
not  have  the  light  turned  on. 

"I  couldn't  bear  you  to  be  unhappy.  You  have 
been  so  happy." 

"Yes,"  she  said. 

"Do  you  want  to  go?"  he  asked. 

"I'm  afraid." 

At  first  he  thought  she  meant  she  was  afraid  of 
the  tongues  of  the  many,  but  that  fear  could  be  no 
more  than  superficial.  Hers  was  deep.  It  seemed 
to  shake  her  as  an  angry  wind  a  tree. 

"Well,  well,"  he  said. 

She  reached  out  in  the  darkness  for  his  hand.  In 
silence  she  pressed  his  hand,  and  then : 

"You  never  know,"  she  said. 

It  was  all  she  could  tell  him,  that  she  was  suf- 
fering.   He  said: 

"There  is  nothing  to  fear,"  and  in  silence  he 
pressed  her  hand. 

328 


OUT   OF   IT 

"You  have  been  good  to  me." 

There  was  a  knell  in  the  words.  They  were  the 
epitaph  of  their  life  together. 

"I  think,"  he  said,  "that,  if  we  were  so  foolish  as 
to  tot  up  the  gains  on  either  side,  mine  would  be  the 
greater." 

Again  she  pressed  his  hand. 

"I'm  not  a  bit  like  Josephine  really,  am  I?" 

"My  dear  child."  He  was  very  near  tears.  "My 
dear  child,  not  a  bit." 

So  he  left  her. 

What  was  she  afraid  of?  His  judgment  of  her? 
That  had  come  up  as  a  dark  rain-heavy  cloud.  But 
it  had  passed  without  shedding  its  waters.  Now, 
yielding  to  the  tenderness  and  pity  she  had  just 
roused  in  him,  he  was  led  to  an  inly  knowledge  of 
her.  She  was  afraid  of  her  love,  afraid  of  her  own 
devouring  absorption  in  it.  (Something  of  the  kind 
he  had  known  himself,  in  early  days  with  her.)  So 
she  clung  to  material  things,  to  the  existence  they 
had  together  builded,  to  his  own  proven  kindness, 
and,  as  she  clung,  only  the  fiercer  burned  the  flame 
within  her,  flickering  destruction  to  everything  she 
cherished.  Sooner  or  later  she  must  yield.  He  saw 
that,  but  also  he  knew  that  to  precipitate  the  sever- 
ance might  be  forever  to  condemn  her  to  her  dread, 
so  that  she  would  be  withered  with  it.  But  if,  of 
her  own  despair,  or  fierce  ecstasy,  or  sudden  illumi- 
nation of  the  inmost  friendliness  of  what  she  feared, 
came  surrender,  then  would  she  win  through  to  the 
ways  of  brightness,  and  be  mistress  of  her  own  life 

329 


OLD   MOLE 

and  love.  He  had  passed  his  own  alternative,  an 
easy  choice ;  he  could  see  on  to  hers,  a  more  grinding 
test.  He  shuddered  for  her,  and,  knowing  its  peril, 
made  no  move  to  help. 

Often  he  would  absent  himself  from  the  chambers 
for  days  together.  The  atmosphere  was  too  ex- 
plosive, the  strain  too  great.  She  would  see  him  to 
the  door  and  kiss  his  cheek,  and  her  eyes  would  say: 

"Perhaps  I  shall  be  gone  when  you  come  back. 
You  understand?" 

And  he  would  turn  his  eyes  away  because  they 
said  too  much. 

But  she  did  not  go. 

For  many  weeks  she  did  not  see  her  lover.  Old 
Mole  knew  that  because  she  was  home  earlier  from 
the  theater  and  was  rarely  out  in  the  afternoon,  and 
spent  much  time  in  writing — she  who  could  never 
write  without  an  effort — letters,  the  charred  frag- 
ments of  which  he  found  in  the  hearth.  Then  she 
was  restless  and  frantically  busy: 

Ruefully  he  would  think : 

"Idiots !    They  are  trying  to  give  it  up  for  me." 

What  if  they  did  give  it  up?  He  began  excitedly 
to  persuade  himself  that  they  would  redeem  their 
fault,  find  nobility  in  self-sacrifice.  But  that  would 
not  do.  He  was  too  wary  a  guardian  of  his  egoism. 
That  would  not  do.  They  had  nothing  to  gain  from 
it.  They  could  give  him  back  nothing.  They  had 
taken  nothing  from  him.    What  she  had  been  to  her 

330 


OUT   OF   IT 

lover  was  something  which  she  had  never  been, 
never  could  be,  to  him.  .  .  .  That  was  how  he  now 
phrased  it  to  himself.  His  love  had  fashioned  her, 
shaped  her,  made  her  lovely:  it  had  needed  another 
love  to  breathe  life  into  her.  And,  warming  into 
life,  she  was  afraid  of  life. 

He  saw  Panoukian  in  the  street.  Lean  the  young 
man  was,  and  drawn,  and  pale,  prowling:  a  figure 
of  thin  hunger,  famished  and  desperate.  He  saw 
Old  Mole  and  swerved  to  avoid  him,  but  he  was  not 
quick  enough,  and  his  arm  was  squeezed  with  a  timid 
friendliness.  He  gave  a  nervous  start,  butted  for- 
ward with  his  head  and  snarled: 

"Go  to  Hell!" 

And  he  broke  away  and  wriggled  like  an  eel  into 
the  crowd. 

"God  help  us!"  said  Old  Mole,  "for  we  are  mak- 
ing pitiable  fools  of  ourselves.  The  vulgar  snap 
and  quarrel  would  be  better  than  this.  .  .  .  No,  it 
would  not." 

It  was  painfully  amusing  to  him  to  see  Matilda's 
face  in  the  picture-postcard  shops.  The  photogra- 
phers had  touched  her  up  into  a  toothy  popular 
beauty,  blank,  expressionless,  fatuous.  It  was  the 
woman's  face  with  the  woman  painted  out:  just  a 
mask,  signifying  nothing,  never  a  thought,  never  a 
feeling,  never  a  desire,  and  not  a  spark  of  will.  To 
thousands  of  young  men  it  would  serve  as  an  ideal 
of  womanhood,  and  they  would  slop  their  calfish 
emotions  over  it;  they  would  go  to  see  her  in  the 

33* 


OLD   MOLE 

theater,  covet  her  with  mealy  lasciviousness.  What 
a  filthy  business  was  the  theater !  He  wished  to  God 
he  had  never  let  her  enter  it,  and  told  himself  things 
would  have  been  very  different  then.  But  would 
they?  What  had  he  given  her  to  hold  her?  What 
ultimately  had  he  given  her?  Tenderness  and  little 
kindnesses,  indulgence  and  fondling:  but  those  were 
only  so  many  trinkets,  little  flowers  plucked  in  the 
hedgerows  and  passed  to  the  fair  companion.  But 
finally,  finally,  what  had  he  given  her?  And  bitterly 
he  said: 

"Instruction.  ...  A  damned  ugly  word." 
She  had  been  his  pupil,  he  her  master.  At  every 
step  he  had  instructed  her,  not  tritely  as  a  Mr.  Bar- 
low, but  he  had  been  Barlowish,  and  that  was  bad. 
He  had  never  admitted  her  to  equality.  How  could 
he?  He  had  never  admitted  himself  to  equality 
with  his  inmost  self.  He  had  always,  as  it  were, 
instructed  himself,  set  out  upon  the  crowded  way  of 
life  with  mnemonic  precepts,  and  gathered  more  and 
more  of  them,  so  that  he  had  never,  after  childhood, 
drawn  upon  his  innate  knowledge,  that  was  more 
than  knowledge.  Without  its  use  his  life  had,  for 
convenience,  been  split  up  into  parts  more  and  more, 
with  passing  years,  at  variance  with  each  other. 
And  when  the  time  came  to  give  his  life  he  was  no 
longer  master  of  it.  He  could  lend  this  and  that  and 
the  other  part;  lend,  in  usury,  for  only  a  life  can  be 
given.  .  .  .  He  had  brought  her  to  suffering:  the 
much  he  had  given  her,  the  pleasantness  and  ease, 
making  her  only  the  more  intimately  feel  her  need 

33* 


OUT   OF   IT 

of  the  more  he  might  have  given.  He  had  brought 
her  to  suffering  and  through  her  suffering  he  was 
beginning  to  learn. 

When  he  thought  of  her  suffering  he  was  tempted 
to  say  to  her — perhaps  not  in  words — "You  will  not 
go.  I  will.  I  will  leave  you  free."  But  that  would 
be  to  lay  her  under  another  obligation,  and  once 
more  to  instruct.  The  thing  was  beyond  good  and 
evil  now:  they  three  were  passing  through  the  in- 
most fire  of  life.  Absurdly  he  thought  of  the  three 
Hebrews  of  the  Bible  and  of  an  old  rhyme  his  nurse 
had  been  used  to  gabble  at  him  and  Robert  when 
they  were  little  boys : 

Shadrach,  Meshach  and  Abednego, 

Shake  the  bed, 

Make  the  bed, 

And  into  bed  you  go. 

For  a  moment  or  two,  like  a  proper  Englishman, 
he  sighed  for  the  happy  state  of  childhood.  Then 
he  shook  that  off. 

"Bah!"  he  said.  "We  sacrifice  the  whole  of  our 
lives  to  the  ideas  implanted  in  us  during  the  first 
foolish  years  of  them." 

Sir  Robert  Wherry  lay  adying.  He  had  never 
been  able  to  resist  an  obituary.  Never  an  illustrious 
man  died  but  Wherry  rushed  into  print,  preferably 
in  the  Times  newspaper,  with  reminiscence  and  la- 
mentation. So,  as  he  lay  adying,  he  composed  many 
obituaries  of  himself.    There  were  reporters  at  his 

333 


OLD    MOLE 

door  waiting  upon  his  utterances.  They  came  as 
regularly  as  the  bulletins.  As  each  might  be  his  last, 
it  was  carefully  framed  to  rival  Goethe's  or  Nel- 
son's or  the  Earl  of  Chatham's  final  words.  Three 
of  them  began:  "We  men  of  England  .  .  ."  one 
"My  mother  said  .  .  ."  two  with  the  word  "Love 
.  .  ."  and  once,  remembering  William  Blake,  he 
raised  his  head  and  prated  of  angels.  Last,  with 
the  true  inspiration  of  death,  faithful  to  himself  and 
the  work  of  his  life,  he  turned  and  smiled  at  his 
nurse  and  his  wife  and  daughter  and  said:  "Give 
my  love  to  my  public."  So  he  died,  and  there  were 
tears  in  thousands  of  British  homes  that  night. 

His  death  crowded  every  other  topic  to  the  back 
pages  of  the  newspapers.  There  were  columns  of 
anecdotes  and  every  day  brought  a  fresh  flood  of 
tributes  from  divines,  lecturers,  novelists,  drama- 
tists, publicists  of  all  kinds.  One  newspaper  sent 
this  reply-paid  telegram  to  Old  Mole: 

Please  send  thirty-six  words  on  Wherry. 

Having  no  other  use  for  the  printed  form,  Old 
Mole  filled  it  in  thus : 

He   sold   sugar. — Beenham. 

His  tribute  was  not  printed. 

There  arose  a  mighty  quarrel  as  to  whether  or  no 
Wherry  should  be  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
The  Poets'  Corner  was  crowded.     Only  an  indu- 

334 


OUT   OF   IT 

bitable  immortal  should  have  the  privilege  of  resting 
his  bones  there.  The  voices  of  the  nation  stormed 
in  argument.  Were  the  works  of  Wherry  litera- 
ture? Men  of  acknowledged  greatness  had  found 
(comparatively)  obscure  graves.  Was  there  not  a 
risk?  .  .  .  There  was  no  risk,  said  the  other  side. 
The  heart  of  the  nation  had  been  moved  by  Wherry, 
the  life  of  the  Empire  had  been  made  sweeter  be- 
cause Wherry  had  lived  and  written. 

Lady  Wherry  was  consulted.  A  picture  of  her 
appeared,  with  a  black-edged  handkerchief  in  front 
of  her  face,  in  the  illustrated  morning  papers.  And 
under  it  was  printed  her  historic  reply: 

"Bury  him  by  all  means " 

Emotion  cut  short  her  words. 

The  argument  was  finally  taken  for  decision  to 
high  places.  Those  in  them  had  read  the  works  of 
Wherry  and,  like  the  smallest  servant  in  a  suburban 
garret,  had  been  moved  to  tears  by  them. 

It  was  arranged.  The  Dean  and  Chapter  bowed 
to  the  decision. 

There  was  to  be  a  procession.  All  the  celebrities 
were  invited,  and,  as  one  of  them,  Old  Mole  was  in- 
cluded. None  was  omitted.  Never  a  man  who 
had  so  much  as  thrust  his  nose  into  the  limelight  was 
left  out. 

In  the  music-halls  it  was  announced  on  the  kine- 
matograph  screens  that  special  films  would  be  pre- 
sented of  the  funeral  of  Sir  Robert  Wherry,  and  the 
audiences  applauded. 

Old  Mole  was  in  the  forty-fifth  ra  triage,  with  Sir 

33S 


OLD    MOLE 

Henry  Butcher  and  the  actress  who  had  created 
"Lossie,"  now  an  actress-manageress.  There  were 
kinematograph  operators  at  every  street  corner,  and 
Tipton  Mudde,  the  aviator,  had  received  a  special 
dispensation  from  the  Home  Secretary  allowing  him 
to  fly  to  and  fro  above  the  procession  and  to  drop 
black  rosettes  into  the  streets. 
It  was  a  wet  day. 

In  the  Abbey  Old  Mole  was  placed  in  the  north 
transept,  and  he  sat  gazing  up  into  the  high,  mys- 
terious roof  where  the  music  of  the  great  organ 
rolled  and  muttered.     Chopin's  Dead  March  was 
played  and  Sir  Henry  Butcher  muttered : 
"There  comes  the  bloody  heart-tear." 
An   anthem   was   sung.      Wherry's    (and   Glad- 
stone's)  favorite  hymn,  "O  God,  our  help  in  ages 
past."     Apparently  there  was  some  delay,  for  an- 
other hymn  was  sung  before  the  pallbearers  and 
the  private  mourners  came  creeping  up  the  nave. 
There  was  silence.    The  Psalms  were  sung. 
Old  Mole  heard  a  reedy,  pleasant  voice : 
".  .  .  For  this  corruptible  must  put  on  incorrup- 
tion  and  this  mortal  shall  put  on  immortality:   then 
shall  be  brought  to  pass  the  saying  that  is  written: 
Death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory.     O  death,  where 
is  thy  sting?    O  grave,  where  is  thy  victory?  .  .  ." 
Behind  him  he  heard  a  droning  voice: 
".  .  .  A  solemn  and  impressive  ceremony.  There'll 
be  sermons  preached  on  it  on  Sunday.     We  have 
offered  a  prize  for  the  best  sermon  in  my  paper, 
Teople  and  Books.'    It  was  in  Teople  and  Books' 

336 


OUT    OF    IT 

that  Robert  Wherry  was  first  discovered  to  be  a 
great  man.  We  printed  his  first  serial.  I  never 
thought  he  would  reach  the  heights  he  did.  .  .  ." 
The  reedy  voice  was  raised  in  a  toasty  fullness: 
uMan  that  is  born  of  woman  hath  but  a  short 
time  to  live  and  is  full  of  misery.  He  cometh  up, 
and  is  cut  down,  as  a  flower:  he  fleeth  as  it  were  a 
shadow  and  never  continueth  in  one  stay." 
Through  the  words  came  the  droning  voice : 
"He  was  slow  in  the  beginning.  He  had  doubts 
and  was  fool  enough  to  want  to  plague  the  public 
with  them.  The  public  wants  certainties.  It  wants 
winners.  I  told  him  that  he  might  have  doubts,  but 
they  were  his  own  private  affair  and  that  it  was 
foolish  to  commit  them  to  writing.  I  had  ado  to 
make  him  heed  me,  but  he  did  heed  me,  and  he  got 
so  that  he  couldn't  fail.  It  wasn't  in  him  to  fail. 
He  could  think  just  the  exact  nothing  that  the  public 
thinks  a  month  or  two  before  they  begin  to  think  it 
themselves.  He  was  fine  for  religion  and  home  life 
and  young  love  and  all  that,  but  you  had  to  keep  him 
off  any  serious  subject.  He  knew  that,  after  a  time. 
He  knew  himself  very  well,  and  he  would  take  in- 
finite trouble.  He  had  no  real  sense  of  humor,  but 
he  learned  how  to  make  jokes, — little,  sly  jokes  they 
were,  shy  things  as  though  they  were  never  sure  of 
being  quite  funny  enough.  It  took  him  years  to  do 
it,  but  he  could  do  it.  There've  been  a  million  and 
a  half  of  his  books  sold.  We'll  sell  fifty  thousand 
this  week.  .  .  .  Man!  I  tell  ye,  I've  had  a  hard 
fight  for  it.     I've  had  thirty  press  agents  up  and 

337 


OLD    MOLE 

down  the  country,  working  day  and  night,  sending 
in  stuff  from  the  moment  he  was  ill.  I  was  with 
him  when  he  ate  the  oysters.  I  had  sick  moments 
when  I  thought  the  newspapers  weren't  going  to  take 
it  up.  I  put  the  proposition  to  the  kinematograph 
people  and  their  interest  carried  it  through.  It  was 
a  near  thing.  The  Dean  hadn't  read  the  man's 
works.  I  had  to  find  some  one  above  the  Dean 
who  had.  ...  I  helped  to  make  Robert  Wherry 
what  he  was.  I  couldn't,  in  decency,  fail  to  give  my 
services  to  his  fame  and  procure  him  the  crowning 
glory  of  .  .  ." 

Old  Mole,  straining  forward,  heard  the  reedy 
voice : 

".  .  .  We  give  Thee  hearty  thanks  for  that  it 
hath  pleased  Thee  to  deliver  this  our  brother  out 
of  the  miseries  of  this  sinful  world.  .  .  ." 

Sick  at  heart,  Old  Mole  edged  into  the  aisle  and 
crept  out  into  the  air,  gratefully  drawing  in  great 
breaths  of  it,  and  thanking  the  Lord  for  His  mercy 
in  leaving  the  sky  above  London  and  suffering  the 
winds  to  blow  through  it  and  the  rain  to  fall  upon  it. 

In  his  chambers  he  found  a  thin  brown  man,  grave 
and  dignified  and  dried  by  the  sun. 

"You  don't  know  me,  Mr.  Beenham?"  he  said. 

Old  Mole  scanned  him. 

"No.     I  can't  say  I  do." 

"Cuthbert  Jones.    You  may  remember.  .  .  ." 

Carlton  Timmis ! 

"Sit  down,  sit  down,"  said  Old  Mole.    "I  am  glad 

338 


OUT   OF   IT 

to  see  you.  I  wrote  to  you,  wired  to  you  at  a  place 
called  Crown  Imperial." 

"A  dirty  hole." 

"You  heard  about  your  play?" 

"Only  six  weeks  ago.  In  Shanghai.  I  picked  up 
an  old  illustrated  paper.  There  was  a  portrait  of 
Miss  Burn  in  it.  I  hear  she  is  a  success.  ...  I 
was  told  there  is  a  company  touring  the  China  coast 
with  the  play." 

"It  is  still  being  performed,"  said  Old  Mole.  "It 
has  been  translated  into  German,  French,  Italian, 
Russian,  Hungarian,  Dutch,  Japanese.  .  .  ." 

"Not  into  Chinese,  I  hope." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  I  live  in  China." 

"You  haven't  come  back,  then?" 

"To  see  my  father,  that  is  all.  As  soon  as  he 
heard  I  was  thousands  of  miles  away  nothing  would 
satisfy  him  but  I  must  come  and  see  him.  He  is 
very  ill,  I  believe,  and  as  I  grow  older  I  find  that  I 
like  to  think  of  him  and  am,  indeed,  fond  of  him. 
I  want  to  hear  him  talk  Edinburgh  philosophy 
again." 

"Your  play,  up  to  date,  has  made  sixty-four  thou- 
sand pounds." 

The  brown  man  sat  up  in  his  chair  and  laughed. 

"It  has  all  been  carefully  invested  and  will  very 
soon  have  grown  into  seventy  thousand.  I  have  had 
the  use  of  it  for  two  years.  I  propose  now  that  we 
go  over  to  the  bank  and  execute  a  transfer." 

"No,  thank  you." 

339 


OLD   MOLE 

"No?    You  must.    You  must." 

"No,  thank  you.  I  have  brought  home  three  hun- 
dred pounds  to  support  my  father  in  his  old  age.  I 
require  nothing  for  myself.  I  am  perfectly  happy. 
I  am  a  teacher  of  English  in  a  Chinese  government 
school  two  hundred  miles  from  the  railway,  with  no 
telegraph  or  telephone.  I  have  a  wife,  a  Chinese, 
who  is  a  marvelous  housekeeper,  a  most  admirable 
mother,  as  stupid  as  a  cow,  and  she  resolutely  re- 
fuses to  learn  English.  I  have  not  been  able  alto- 
gether to  shake  off  my  interest  in  the  theater,  but  the 
traveling  Children  of  the  Pear-tree  Garden  give  me 
greater  pleasure  than  I  ever  had  from  any  English 
company  in  or  out  of  the  West  End.  They  are 
sincere.  They  are  rascals,  but  they  love  their 
work.  .  .  ." 

"But  the  play,  and  the " 

".  .  .  Money.  ...  If  I  were  you,  Mr.  Mole,  I 
should  drop  it  over  Waterloo  Bridge.  I  came  to- 
day to  return  you  your  fifty  pounds,  for  which  I  can 
never  be  sufficiently  grateful.  I  am  glad — and 
sorry — that  you  have  been  repaid  so  plentifully." 

He  could  not  be  prevailed  on  to  take  a  penny, 
and  presently  they  stopped  arguing  about  it,  and 
Timmis  instructed  Old  Mole  in  the  ways  of  the 
Chinese,  how  they  were  a  wise  people  who  prized 
leisure  above  all  things,  and  so  ordered  their  lives 
as  to  preserve  the  simplicity  of  the  soul,  without 
which,  it  is  clear,  the  brain  must  be  overwrought  and 
dislocated  through  its  vain  efforts  to  do  the  work  of 
the  mind.     He  drew  such  a  charming  picture  of 

340 


OUT   OF   IT 

Chinese  life  that  Old  Mole,  with  the  folly  of  Lon- 
don etched  upon  his  brain,  could  not  but  applaud  his 
decision  to  return.  They  talked  of  many  things 
and  wagged  their  heads  over  the  strange  chances  of 
life,  and  they  parted  the  richer  by  each  other's  re- 
spect and  admiration  and  friendly  wishes. 

And  Old  Mole  returned  to  the  strain  of  his  exist- 
ence. Impossible,  he  thought,  to  stay  in  London. 
Equally  impossible  to  retain  so  huge  a  sum  of  money. 
It  would  go  on  swelling  like  a  tumor,  and,  like  a 
tumor,  it  would  create  a  stoppage  either  in  his  own 
life  or  in  someone's  else.  Had  it  not  already  done 
so?  Had  it  not  played  its  part  in  the  tragi-comedy 
that  was  not  yet  come  to  its  climax?  Had  it  not 
raised  him  to  an  absurd  height,  blown  him  out  into 
a  caricature  of  himself,  pulled  out  his  nose,  goggled 
his  eyes,  given  him  a  hunch  back  and  a  pot  belly, 
forced  him  into  overfeeding,  overdrinking,  over- 
talking,  into  writing  a  ridiculous,  pontifical,  instruc- 
tive book,  choked  his  humor  and  played  the  very 
devil  with  his  imagination?  He  pondered  this  ques- 
tion of  the  money  and  at  last  he  had  an  inspiration. 
He  went  down  over  Blackfriars  Bridge  and  into  the 
slums  of  Southwark.  In  a  foul  street  he  called  at  a 
house  and  asked  how  many  people  there  might  be 
living  in  it.  He  was  told  twenty-three:  four  fami- 
lies. In  another  there  were  thirty-one.  In  another 
he  was  asked  in  by  the  woman,  and  there  was  a 
corpse  on  the  bed,  and  there  were  three  children 
eating  bread  and  jam  for  their  dinner  on  the  table 

341 


OLD   MOLE 

only  a  yard  from  it,  and  the  woman  was  clearly 
going  to  have  another  child.  He  asked  the  name  of 
the  landlord  of  that  house,  and  next  day  sought  him 
out.  He  bought  the  house :  he  went  on  buying  until 
he  had  the  whole  row,  then  the  whole  street,  then 
the  next  street  and  the  next,  and  the  next,  until  his 
money  was  all  gone  but  ten  thousand  pounds.  Then 
he  gave  orders  for  all  the  foul  houses  to  be  pulled 
down  and  a  garden  to  be  made.  .  .  .  He  was  told 
that  it  would  be  impossible — that  he  would  have  to 
get  permission  from  the  Borough  Council,  and  the 
County  Council,  and  Parliament.     * 

"Can't  I  do  what  I  like  with  my  own?"  he  said. 

"It's  a  question,"  said  the  rent  collector  who  had 
taken  him  under  his  wing,  "whether  the  Council  can 
afford  to  do  without  the  rates.  If  you  pull  the 
houses  down,  sir,  you'll  only  make  the  overcrowding 
worse,  because  they  must  live  somewhere,  sir,  and, 
bless  you,  they  don't  mind  it.  They're  born  in  it 
and  they  die  in  it.  You  and  I,  sir,  don't  like  the 
smell,  but  they  don't  never  notice  it." 

But  Old  Mole  stuck  to  it  and  the  houses  were 
pulled  down  and  a  garden  was  made,  and  he  said 
not  a  word  about  it  to  a  soul.  It  was  only  a  very 
little  garden  because,  though  he  had  bought  many 
houses,  he  could  not  buy  the  land  on  which  all  of 
them  were  built  because  it  was  very  dear. 

Almost  best  of  all  he  liked  the  destructive  part  of 
the  undertaking.  Pulling  down  houses  was  in  his 
mood  and  sorted  with  his  circumstances.  From  his 
own  house  he  had  set  his  face. 

342 


OUT   OF   IT 

He  had  received  a  letter  from  Panoukian : 

"Dear  Sir, — You  have  eyes  in  your  head  and 
must  have  seen  what  I  have  been  at  no  pains  to  con- 
ceal from  you.  I  have  lived  through  weeks  of  tor- 
ture now  and  would  live  through  many  more  if  there 
were  anything  to  be  gained.  I  have  been  led  to 
write  this  by  the  enclosed  letter,  which  I  can  show 
you,  I  think,  without  betrayal.  Ich  kann  nicht 
mehr.  .  .  .  This  may  be  a  shock  to  you,  no  doubt 
it  will  cause  you  much  pain,  but  I  believe  you  have 
the  humanity  to  attempt  to  understand  and  to  be- 
lieve me  when  I  say  that  I  was  never,  in  my  heart, 
more  your  friend  than  I  am  now.  I  think  it  is  for 
you  to  help  in  so  much  suffering." 

The  enclosed  letter  was  from  Matilda.  Old 
Mole's  eye  clouded  as  he  read  it: 

"My  dear,  I  can't  let  you  go.  I  can't,  I  can't. 
I've  tried  so  hard,  I  have.  It  isn't  wrong  to  love 
like  that.  I  can  think  of  nothing  else.  He's  been 
so  kind,  too.  But  I'm  spoiling  your  life.  I  can 
love  you,  my  dear,  but  I'm  not  the  woman  you  ought 
to  have.  I  can  love  you,  my  dear,  but  I'm  not 
young  and  sweet  like  you  ought  to  have.  All  this 
thinking  and  suffering  has  made  me  hard  in  my  heart, 
I  think.  There's  such  a  lot  between  me  and  you,  my 
dear.  I  could  fight  through  it  with  you,  but  that 
would  be  so  hard  on  you.  It's  not  as  if  he  was  a 
bad  man,  but  he's  so  kind.  He  always  understands, 
but  not  like  you,  my  darling:  he  only  understands 
with  his  mind.  I've  tried  not  to  write  to  you  and 
to  make  it  easy  for  you,  but  I  can't  not  write  to  you 
now.  I  must,  even  if  it's  for  the  last  time.  I  love 
you." 

343 


OLD    MOLE 

It  was  an  untidy,  blotched  scrawl.  Never  had 
Old  Mole  seen  such  a  long  letter  from  Matilda. 
Very  carefully  he  folded  it  up  and  placed  it  in  his 
pocketbook. 

He  went  down  to  her  room,  and,  as  he  knew  he 
would,  found  her  boxes  packed,  her  wardrobe,  her 
drawers,  empty.  The  puppy,  now  a  tolerable  dog, 
was  gazing  ruefully  at  her  trunks,  ominous  of  de- 
parture. 

She  came  in,  was  startled  to  see  him,  recovered 
herself,  and  smiled  at  him. 

"Will  you  come  with  me?"  he  said. 

She  followed  him  upstairs. 

"I  have  something  to  show  you." 

He  led  her  to  his  room.  On  the  floor  were  his 
bags,  hatbox,  rug,  packed,  strapped  and  labeled. 

"I  am  going,"  he  said.  "The  puppy  will  not  mind 
my  going." 


VII 
APPENDIX 

A  LETTER  FROM  H.  J.  BEENHAM  TO  A,  Z.  PANOUKIAN,  M.P. 

"For  two  years  it  was  the  fashion  among 
the  English  to  cut  out  the  appendix;  but 
the  fashion  died  and  appendices  are  now 
retained." 

OBSERVATIONS  AMONG  THE  ENGLISH, 
BY  C.  L.  HUNG  (BRETZELFRESSER 
COMPANY,  HONG  KONG  AND  NEW 
YORK) . 


VII 

APPENDIX 


Capraia. 


My  Dear  Panoukian, 

So  you  have  become  a  politician!  I  had  hoped 
for  better  things. 

It  is  ten  years  now  since  I  left  England,  so  that 
I  can  write  to  you  without  the  prickly  heat  of  moral 
prejudice.  It  is  a  year  since  I  saw  you  in  Venice, 
you  and  her.  She  had  her  arm  in  yours  and  you  did 
not  see  me.  You  saw  nothing  but  her,  and  she  saw 
nothing  but  you,  and  it  was  clear  to  me  that  you  were 
enjoying  your  tenth  honeymoon,  which  is,  surely,  a 
far  greater  thing  than  the  first,  if  only  you  can  get 
to  it.  You  came  out  of  St.  Mark's,  you  and  she, 
and  I  was  so  close  that  I  could  have  touched  you. 
I  shrank  into  the  shadow  and  watched  you  feed  the 
pigeons,  and  then  you  had  tea  on  the  sunlit  side  of 
the  Piazza  and  then  you  strolled  toward  the  Rialto. 
I  took  a  gondola  to  the  station  and  fled  to  Verona, 
for  I  could  have  no  room  in  your  tenth  Eden.  Ver- 
ona is  the  very  place  for  a  bachelor,  which,  I  there 
discovered,  I  have  never  ceased  to  be.  Verona  be- 
longs to  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  no  other  lovers  may 
do  more  than  pass  the  day  there,  salute  and  speed 
on  to  Venice.  But  a  bachelor  may  stay  there  many 
days:  he  will  find  an  excellent  local  wine,  good 
cigars  built  round  straws,  passable  food,  and  the 
swift-flowing  Adige  wherein  to  cast  his  thoughts. 
This  I  did,  with  a  blessing  or  two  to  be  conveyed  to 

347 


OLD    MOLE 

you  in  Venice.  I  hope  you  received  them.  The 
Adige  bears  thoughts  and  blessings  and  sewage  with 
equal  zest  to  his  goal,  as  I  would  all  men  might  do. 

I  stayed  for  a  month  in  Verona  and  I  remember 
little  of  it  but  some  delicious  plums  I  bought  in  the 
marketplace  and  ate  in  the  amphitheater,  spitting  the 
stones  down  into  the  arena  with  a  dexterity  I  have 
only  seen  equaled  by  Matilda  in  the  days  of  my  first 
acquaintance  with  her.  That  is  far  back  now,  but 
there  is  not  a  moment  of  it  all  that  I  do  not  like  to 
remember,  and  there  in  the  amphitheater  I  told  my- 
self the  whole  adventure  as  a  story  from  which  I  was 
detached.  It  moved  me  more  than  the  house  of 
Juliet,  more  than  all  the  sorrows  of  the  Scaligers, 
for  it  is  a  modern  story  and,  as  Moliere  said,  "Les 
anciens  sont  les  anciens  et  nous  sommes  les  gens 
d'aujourd'hui." 

Jujourd'huif  To-day!  That  is  the  marvel,  that 
out  of  the  swiftly  moving,  ever  changing  vapor 
which  is  life  we  should  achieve  anything  so  positive. 
To-day  never  goes.  There  is  a  thing  called  yester- 
day, but  that  is  only  the  dust-bin  at  the  door  into 
which  we  cast  our  refuse,  our  failures,  our  worn-out 
souls.  There  is  a  thing  called  to-morrow,  but  that  is 
the  storehouse  of  to-day,  bursting  with  far  better 
things,  emotions,  loves,  hopes,  than  those  we  have 
discarded.  But  into  to-day  the  whole  passionate 
force  of  the  universe  is  poured,  through  us,  through 
all  things,  and  therefore  to-day  is  marvelous. 

Here  in  Italy  there  is  some  worship  of  to-day. 
There  are  times  and  times  when  it  is  enough  to  be 
alive;  and  there  are  times  when  the  light  glows 
magically  and  the  whole  body  and  being  of  a  man 
melt  into  it,  thrill  in  worship,  and  then,  however  old 
he  be,  however  burdened  with  Time's  tricks  of  the 
flesh,  in  his  heart  there  are  songs  and  dancing. 

In  England  we  cling  to  the  past,  we  never  know 

348 


APPENDIX 

to-day,  we  never  dare  open  the  storehouse  of  to- 
morrow, for  we  are  all  trained  in  the  house  of 
Mother  Hubbard.  I  have  loved  England  dearly 
since  I  have  lived  away  from  her.  I  can  begin,  I 
think,  to  understand.  She  is  weary,  maybe ;  she  has 
many  hours  of  boredom.  She  is,  alas,  a  country 
where  grapes  grow  under  glass,  where,  I  sometimes 
think,  men  do  not  grow  at  all.  She  is  a  country  of 
adolescents;  her  sons  seem  never  to  be  troubled  by 
the  difficulties  which  beset  the  adult  mind;  they  rush 
ahead,  careless  of  danger  because  they  never  see  it; 
their  lives  hang  upon  a  precarious  luck:  they  are 
impelled,  not,  I  believe,  as  other  nations  fancy,  by 
greed  or  conceit,  but  by  that  furious  energy  which 
attends  upon  the  adolescent  hatred  of  being  left  out 
of  things.  A  grown  man  can  tolerably  gauge. his 
capacity,  but  the  desires  of  a  youth  are  constantly 
excited  by  the  desires  of  others;  he  must  acquire 
lest  others  obtain;  he  must  love  every  maiden  and 
yield  to  none ;  he  must  be  forever  donning  new  habits 
to  persuade  himself  that  he  is  more  a  man  than  the 
grown  men  among  whom  enviously  he  moves.  He  is 
filled  with  a  fevered  curiosity  about  himself,  but 
never  dares  stay  to  satisfy  it,  lest  he  should  miss  an 
opportunity  of  bidding  for  the  admiration  and  praise 
of  others  which  he  would  far  rather  have  than  their 
sympathy.  Sympathy  he  dreads,  for  it  forces  him 
back  upon  himself,  brings  him  too  near  to  seeing 
himself  without  excitement.  ...  So  far,  my  ob- 
servations, carefully  selected,  take  me. 

There  have  been  grown  men  in  England,  wonder- 
ful men,  men  all  strength  and  sympathy  and  love, 
with  powers  far  surpassing  the  intelligence  of  other 
races :  but  mark  how  the  English  treat  them.  They 
set  them  on  a  pinnacle,  give  them  the  admiration 
they  despised,  take  none  of  their  sympathy,  raise 
horrible  statues  to  their  memory,  and,  to  protect 

349 


OLD    MOLE 

themselves  against  their  thought,  the  mighty  force 
of  truth  in  their  souls,  breed  dwarfish  imitations  of 
them,  whom  they  adore  and  love  as  men  can  only 
love  those  of  their  own  moral  race.  No  other  coun- 
try less  deserves  to  have  great  men,  and  no  other 
country  has  gotten  greater.  This  astonishing  phe- 
nomenon has  produced  that  complacency  which  is  the 
only  check  on  the  fury  of  England's  adolescent  en- 
ergy. Without  it,  without  the  Brummagem  dignity 
in  which  such  complacency  takes  form,  she  would 
long  ago  have  rushed  to  her  destruction.  With  it 
she  has  a  political  solidity  to  which  graver  and  more 
intelligent  nations  can  never  aspire. 

But  I  should  not  talk  politics  to  a  politician. 
Nothing,  I  think  you  will  agree,  can  reconcile  con- 
ceptions bred  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  those 
begot  outside  it.  It  has  never  yet  been  accom- 
plished, and  I  gather,  from  the  few  English  jour- 
nals I  see,  that  the  attempt  to  do  so  is  all  but  aban- 
doned. 

I  am  writing  to  you  to-day  because  I  wished  to  do 
so  in  Verona,  but  was  there  too  deep  in  an  emo- 
tional flux  to  be  able  to  write  anything  but  bad 
poetry  or  a  crude  expression  of  sympathy,  which,  as 
it  would  have  been  gratuitous,  must  have  been  offen- 
sive. To-day,  in  Livorno  (which  our  sailors  have 
chewed  with  their  tobacco  into  Leghorn),  I  found 
among  my  papers  a  letter  written  to  you  by  Matilda 
nearly  twelve  years  ago.  It  belongs  to  you  and  I 
send  it. 

Yesterday  in  Livorno  I  found  a  marionette  show 
and  that  set  me  thinking  of  England  and  the  theater 
and  many  other  subjects  which  used  to  absorb  me 
during  the  hectic  years  of  my  life  when  I  dwelt  in 
Gray's  Inn.  And  I  wished  to  communicate  with 
England  and  could  find  no  one  to  whom  I  am  so 
nearly  attached  as  you.     Iwas  engaged  to  visit  Elba, 

350 


APPENDIX 

and  was  there  this  morning,  but  was  so  distressed 
with  the  thought  of  the  extreme  youthfulness  of 
England's  treatment  of  the  great  Napoleon  that  I 
left  my  party  and  crossed  over  to  Capraia,  which 
you  will  find  on  the  map,  and  here,  under  the  hot 
sun,  with  a  green  umbrella  over  my  bald  head,  I  am 
writing.  I  can  see  Elba.  With  my  mind's  eye  I  can 
see  England,  and,  indeed,  when  soberly  I  turn  the 
matter  over,  I  conclude  that  her  treatment  of  Na- 
poleon has  not  been  nearly  so  shameful  as  her  treat- 
ment of  Shelley  or  Shakespeare.  Shelley  wrote  one 
play;  it  has  never  openly  been  acted.  Shakespeare 
wrote  many  plays;  they  have  been  Butchered,  re- 
duced from  the  dramatic  to  the  theatrical. 

The  marionettes  stirred  me  greatly.  The  drama 
they  played  was  familiar — husband,  wife,  and  lover 
— the  treatment  conventional,  though  the  dialogue 
had  the  freshness  of  improvisation.  It  was  often 
bald  as  my  head,  and  in  the  more  passionate  mo- 
ments almost  heartbreakingly  inarticulate.  It  was 
a  tragedy;  the  husband  slew  the  lover,  the  wife 
stabbed  herself,  the  husband  went  mad,  and  they  lay 
together  in  a  limp  heap,  while  from  the  street  out- 
side— where,  I  felt  sure,  there  were  gay  puppets 
carelessly  strolling — came  the  most  comic,  derisive 
little  tune  played  upon  a  reed.  (It  must  have  been 
a  reed,  for  it  was  most  certainly  puppet  and  no  hu- 
man music,  and,  for  that,  only  the  more  stirring.) 
The  whole  scene  is  as  living  to  my  mind  as  any 
experience  of  my  own,  and,  indeed,  my  own  ad- 
ventures in  this  life  have  been  illuminated  by  it.  In 
the  English  theater  I  have  never  seen  a  perform- 
ance that  did  not  thicken  and  obscure  my  conscious- 
ness. I  could  not  but  contrast  the  two,  and  you  find 
me  sitting  on  an  island  striving  to  explain  it. 

In  the  first  place  the  performance  of  these  mari- 
onettes compelled  my  whole-hearted  interest  because 

351 


OLD    MOLE 

the  play  was  detached  from  life,  was  not  palpably 
unreal  under  the  artificial  light,  and  therefore  could 
begin  to  reflect  and  be  a  comment  upon  life  in  a 
degree  of  success  dependent,  of  course,  upon  the 
mind  behind  it.  It  was  a  common  but  a  simple  mind, 
skilled  in  the  uses  of  the  tiny  theater,  versed  in  its 
tradition,  and  always  nice  in  its  perception  of  the 
degrees  of  emotion  proper  to  be  loosed  for  the 
building  up  of  the  dramatic  scenes.  It  was  not  truly 
an  imaginative  mind,  not  a  genuinely  dramatic  mind, 
but  it  was  thoroughly  loyal  to  the  imagination  which 
has  created  and  developed  the  theater  of  the  mari- 
onettes. Except  that  the  showman  had  a  marked 
preference  for  the  doll  who  played  the  husband,  the 
balance  of  the  play  was  excellently  maintained,  and 
the  marionettes  did  exactly  as  they  were  bid.  Thus 
between  the  controlling  mind  of  the  theater,  the  mind 
in  its  tradition,  and  my  own  there  was  set  up  a  con- 
tinuous and  unbroken  communication,  and  my  brain 
was  kept  most  exaltingly  busy  drawing  on  those 
forces  and  passions,  those  powers  of  selection  and 
criticism  which  make  of  man  a  reasoning  and  then 
a  dramatic  animal.  You  may  be  sure  that  I  fed 
the  drama  on  the  stage  with  that  other  drama, 
through  which  you  and  I  floundered  so  many  years 
ago.  I  longed  to  cry  out  to  the  husband  that  he 
should  think  less  of  himself  and  what  the  neighbors 
would  say  and  more  of  his  wife,  who,  being  between 
two  men,  enamored  of  one  and  dedicated  to  the 
other,  was  in  a  far  worse  plight  than  himself,  who 
was  torn  only  between  his  affection  and  his  pride. 
But  tradition  and  convention  and  his  own  brainless 
subservience  to  his  passion  were  too  strong  for  him, 
and  he  killed  the  lover;  would  have  killed  the 
woman,  too,  but  she  was  too  quick  for  him.  I  wept, 
I  assure  you.  I  was  sorrowful.  Judge,  then,  of  my 
relief  and  delight  when  the  curtain  rose  again  and 

352 


APPENDIX 

those  same  three  puppets,  with  others,  played  the 
merriest  burlesque,  a  starveling  descendant,  I  fancy, 
of  the  commedia  delV  arte.  Where  before  they  had 
surrendered  to  their  passions,  now  my  three  puppets 
played  with  them  at  nimble  knucklebones.  The  pas- 
sion was  no  less  genuine,  but  this  time  they  were  its 
masters,  not  its  slaves,  they  had  it  casked  and 
bunged  and  could  draw  on  it  at  will.  My  lady 
puppet  coquetted  with  the  two  gentlemen,  set  them 
wrangling  for  her,  wagering,  dicing,  singing,  danc- 
ing, vying  with  each  other  in  mischievous  tricks  upon 
the  town,  and  at  last,  owing,  I  suspect,  to  the  show- 
man's partiality,  she  sank  into  the  husband  puppet's 
arms  and  the  lover  puppet  was  propelled  by  force 
of  leg  through  the  window.  (Pray,  my  dear  Panou- 
kian,  admire  the  euphemism  to  spare  both  our  feel- 
ings.) And  now  I  laughed  as  healthily  and  heartily 
as  before  I  wept.  .  .  .  Now,  said  I  to  myself,  in 
England  I  should  have  been  tormented  with  a  pic- 
ture, cut  up  by  the  insincerity  of  the  actors  into  "ef- 
fective" scenes  and  episodes,  of  three  eminently  re- 
spectable persons  shaking  themselves  to  bits  with  a 
passion  they  had  never  had;  or,  for  comedy,  there 
would  have  been  the  ribaldry  of  equally  respectable 
persons  twisting  themselves  into  knots  in  their  at- 
tempts to  frustrate  the  discovery  of  a  mis-spent 
night.  Now,  thought  I,  this  brings  me  near  the 
heart  of  the  mystery.  There  are  few  men  and  women 
born  without  the  kernel  of  passion.  There  are  forty 
millions  of  men  and  women  in  the  British  Isles; 
what  do  they  do  with  their  passion?  What,  indeed 
— let  us  be  frank — had  I  done  with  my  own  ? 

Now  do  you  perceive  why  I  am  writing  to  you? 

First  of  all,  let  us  agree  that  boyhood  is  the  least 
zestful  part  of  a  man's  life.  His  existence  is  not 
then  truly  his  own,  he  is  a  spectator;  he  is  absorbed 
in  gazing  upon  the  great  world  which  at  a  seemingly 

353 


OLD    MOLE 

remote  period  he  is  to  enter.  Then  he  is  appren- 
ticed, initiated  by  the  brutal  test  of  a  swift  growth 
and  physical  change;  easily  he  learns  the  ways,  the 
manners,  the  pursuits  of  men;  the  conduct  of  the 
material  world,  the  common  life,  is  all  arranged;  he 
has  but  to  slip  into  it.  That  is  easy.  But  his  own 
individual  life,  that  is  not  so  easy.  He  soon  per- 
ceives, confusedly  and  mistily,  that  into  that  he  can 
only  enter  through  his  passion,  through  its  spon- 
taneous and  inevitable  expression.  He  knows  that; 
you  know  it.  I  know  it.  They  are  a  miserable 
few  who  do  not  know  it.  But  in  England  he  can 
find  none  to  share  his  knowledge.  He  is  left  alone 
with  his  dread,  with  so  much  sick  hope  thrust  back 
in  him,  for  want  of  a  generous  salute  from  those  who 
have  gone  before,  that  it  rots  away  in  him  and  eats 
into  his  natural  faith.  He  asks  for  a  vision  of  man- 
hood and  is  given  a  dull  imitation  of  man,  strong, 
silent,  brutal,  and  indifferent.  He  must  admire  it, 
for  on  all  sides  it  is  admired.  As  a  child  he  has 
been  taught  to  babble  of  gentle  Jesus;  as  a  youth 
he  finds  that  same  Jesus  turned — by  the  distorting 
English  atmosphere — into  a  hard  Pharisee,  bless- 
ing the  money  changers.  His  passion  racks  his  bones 
and  blisters  his  soul.  His  inmost  self  yearns  to  get 
out  and  away,  to  spend  itself,  to  find  its  due  share 
in  the  ever-creating  love.  He  dare  not  so  much  as 
whisper  his  need,  for  none  but  shameful  words  are 
given  him  to  express  it.  "All's  well  with  the  world," 
he  is  told.  "All's  wrong  with  myself,"  he  begins 
to  think.  In  other  men,  older  men,  he  can  find  no 
trace  of  passion,  only  temper  and  lewdness,  with  a 
swagger  to  both.  They  bear  both  easily.  His  pas- 
sion becomes  hateful  to  him;  he  begins  to  chafe 
against  it,  to  spurn  it,  to  live  gaily  enough  in  the 
common  life,  to  choke  the  vision  of  his  own  life. 
So  it  has  been  with  you,  with  me,  with  all  of  us. 

354 


APPENDIX 

There  are  works  of  art,  it  is  true.  Grown  men 
understand  them;  adolescents  hate  them,  for  works 
of  art  reveal  always  the  fulfilment  of  passion;  they 
begin  to  flower  at  the  point  to  which  passion  has 
raised  the  soul;  they  are  the  record  and  the  land- 
marks of  its  after-journeyings,  its  own  free  travel- 
ing. To  the  soul  in  bondage  all  that  is  but  babble 
and  foolish  talk,  just  as,  to  the  adolescent,  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  grown  man  is  folly.  That  a  man 
should  believe  in  human  nature — as  he  must  if  he 
believes  in  himself — is,  in  adolescent  eyes,  suspect. 
.  .  .  Have  you  not  heard  intelligent  Englishmen 
say  contemptuously  of  a  man  that  he  is  an  idealist, 
as  who  should  say  idiot? 

Passion  leads  to  idealism,  to  belief  that  there  is  a 
wisdom  greater  than  the  wisdom  of  men,  a  knowl- 
edge of  which  the  knowledge  of  men  is  but  a  part,  a 
pulse  in  the  universe  by  which  they  may  set  the  beat 
of  their  own. 

What  do  the  English  do  with  their  passion?  They 
strangle  it. 

What  did  I  do  with  my  own?  I  let  it  ooze  and 
trickle  away.  I  accepted  my  part  in  the  common 
life,  and  of  my  own  life  preserved  only  certain  mild 
delights  and  dull  passive  joys,  which  became  milder 
and  duller  as  the  years  went  by.  I  was  engaged  in 
educating  the  young.  I  shudder  to  think  of  it  now. 
When  I  think  of  the  effect  those  years,  and  that 
curriculum,  had  upon  my  own  mind  I  turn  sick  to 
imagine  the  harm  it  must  have  done  to  the  young, 
eager  minds — (the  dullest  child's  mind  is  eager)  — 
entrusted  to  my  care  by  their  confiding,  worthy,  and 
adolescent  parents.  It  is  a  horror  to  me  to  look 
back  on  it,  and  I  look  back  as  little  as  may  be. 

But  to-day,  in  the  security  of  glorious  weather, 
the  impregnable  peace  of  my  island  slung  between 
blue  sea  and  sky,  I  can  look  back  with  amused  curi- 

3SS 


OLD    MOLE 

osity,  setting  my  infallible  puppets  against  the  blus- 
tering half-men  whom  I  remember  to  have  inhabited 
those  portions  of  England  that  I  knew.  I  do  not 
count  myself  a  freeman,  but  one  who  has  escaped 
from  prison  and  still  bears  the  marks  of  it  in  his 
mind;  it  is  to  rid  myself  of  those  marks  that  I  am 
thus  wrapt  in  criticism,  and  not  to  condemn  the 
lives  of  those  who  are  left  incarcerated.  Impossi- 
ble to  condemn  without  self-condemnation.  No 
doubt  they  are  making  the  best  of  it.  .  .  .  I  find 
that  I  cannot  now  think  of  anything  in  the  world  as 
separate  from  myself;  the  world  embraces  all  things, 
and  so  must  I;  but  to  do  so  comfortably  I  must  first 
understand  everything  that  is  sufficiently  imaged  to 
be  within  the  range  of  my  apprehension.  Neither 
more  nor  less  can  I  attempt.  If  more,  then  I  am 
plunged  in  error  and  confusion;  if  less,  then  am  I  the 
captive  of  my  own  indolence,  and  such  for  the  greater 
part  of  my  life  I  have  been. 

When  I  look  back  on  my  experience  in  London 
I  cannot  but  see  that  I  never  became  a  part  of  it, 
never  truly  lived  in  its  life.  That  may  have  been 
only  because  a  quarter  of  a  century  spent  as  an  auto- 
crat among  small  boys  is  not  perhaps  the  ideal  prepa- 
ration for  living  in  a  crowd,  a  herd  without  a  leader, 
in  which  there  is  no  rule  of  manners  but:  Be  servile 
when  you  must,  insolent  when  you  can.  Possibly  the 
majority  are  so  bred  and  trained  that  such  a  flurry 
and  scurry  seem  to  them  normal  and  inevitable.  '  I 
am  sure  very  many  are  convinced  that  without  in- 
trigue and  wirepulling  they  cannot  get  their  bread, 
or  the  position  which  will  ensure  a  continued  supply. 
There  they  certainly  are;  wriggling  and  squirming 
and  pushing;  they  like  it;  they  make  no  move  to  get 
out  of  it;  their  existence  is  bound  up  in  it  and  they 
fight  to  preserve  it  without  looking  further.  They 
will  tell  you  that  they  are  assisting  "movements," 

356 


APPENDIX 

but  they  are  only  following  fashions.  .  .  .  What 
movement  are  you  in? 

Matilda,  I  gather,  is  a  fashion.  I  never  knew  her 
follow  anything  but  her  own  desire,  and  as  her  de- 
sires are  human  and  reasonable  she  has  risen  by 
the  law  of  gravity  above  the  rout,  above  the  diffi- 
culties of  her  own  nature,  above  any  incongruities 
that  arise  between  her  individuality  and  the  conven- 
tions of  the  common  life  of  England.  And  of  course 
she  rises  above  the  work  she  has  to  do,  the  idiotic 
songs  written  for  her,  the  meaningless  dances  de- 
vised to  sort  with  the  pointless  tunes.  And  when 
she  suffers  from  the  emptiness  of  it  all,  she  has  you, 
and  she  has  the  memory  of  myself  to  guard  her 
against  the  filthy  welter  from  which  she  sprang. 
She  used  me — (you  will  let  her  read  this) — and  I 
am  proud  to  have  served  her. 

There  are  many  people  like  Matilda,  comedians 
and  entertainers,  who  develop  a  certain  strength  of 
personality  in  their  revolt  against  the  conditions  of 
their  breeding.  It  is  impossible  to  educate  them. 
Their  intentions  are  too  direct.  .  .  .  Not  all  of 
them  succeed,  or  have  the  luck  to  become  the  fash- 
ion. You  are  one  of  them  yourself,  my  dear  Panou- 
kian,  and  in  the  days  when  I  was  living  with  you 
two  I  used  excitedly  to  think  that  there  was  a  whole 
generation  of  them;  that  the  young  men  and  women 
of  England  were  at  last  insisting  on  growing  out  of 
adolescence.  Sometimes  I  felt  very  sure  of  it,  but  I 
was  too  sanguine.  Life  does  not  act  like  that;  there 
are  no  sudden  general  growths.  There  are  violent 
reactions,  but  they  are  soon  swallowed  up  in  the 
great  forward  flow. 

"Comedians  and  entertainers"  I  said  just  now. 
You  are  all  that,  all  you  public  characters.  You 
depend  upon  the  crowd,  you  are  too  near  them.  You 
are  in  dread  of  falling  back,  and  also  you  are  aware 

357 


OLD    MOLE 

that  the  size  of  a  man  can  only  be  gauged  at  a  dis- 
tance, and  you  have  to  contend  with  the  charlatan. 
A  better  comedian  you  may  be,  but  he  has  not  your 
scruples,  your  sensitiveness,  and  is  therefore  more 
dexterous  at  drawing  the  crowd's  attention.  .  .  . 
Again  I  turn  with  relief  to  my  puppets;  they  have 
no  temptation  to  insincerity;  they  obey  the  strings, 
play  their  parts,  and  are  put  back  into  their  boxes. 
They  need  no  bread  for  body  or  mind.  They  have 
no  life  except  the  common  life  of  the  stage,  no  in- 
dividuality and  no  torturing  need  of  fulfilling  it. 

But  you  comedians — writers,  actors,  politicians, 
divines — are  raised  above  the  common  life  by  the 
degree  in  which  you  have  developed  your  individual 
lives,  including  your  talents,  by  work,  by  energy, 
sometimes  deplorably  by  luck.  The  validity  of  your 
claims  is  tested  by  your  ability  to  break  with  the 
common  life,  and  pass  on  to  creation  and  discovery 
which  shall  bring  back  into  the  common  life  power 
to  make  it  more  efficient. 

I  must  define.  By  the  common  life  I  mean  the 
pooling  of  energy  which  shall  provide  all  members 
of  the  community  with  food,  clothing,  house  room, 
transport,  the  necessaries  of  existence,  and  such  luxu- 
ries as  they  require.  Its  concern  is  entirely  ma- 
terial. Where  it  governs  moral,  ethical,  and  spirit- 
ual affairs  it  is  an  injurious  infringement,  and  can- 
not but  engender  hypocrisy.  How  can  you  pool 
religion,  or  morality,  without  degrading  compro- 
mise? The  world  has  discarded  kingcraft  and 
priestcraft  and  come  to  mobcraft.  That  will  have 
its  day.  Mobcraft  is  and  cannot  but  be  theatrical. 
In  a  community  of  human  beings  who  are  neither 
puppets  nor  men  there  is  a  perpetual  shuffling  of 
values  among  which  to  live  securely  there  is  in  all 
relations  an  unhealthy  amount  of  play-acting; — take 
any  husband  and  wife,  father  and  son,  motherland 

358 


APPENDIX 

daughter,  lover  and  lover,  or,  Panoukian,  school- 
master and  pupil.  Life  is  then  too  like  the  theater 
for  the  theater  to  claim  an  independent  existence. 
And  that,  I  think,  is  why  there  is  no  drama  in  Eng* 
land.  That  is  why  the  play-actors  have  column? 
and  columns  in  the  newspapers  devoted  to  their 
doings,  their  portraits  in  shops  and  thoroughfares, 
their  private  histories  (where  presentable  or  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  public  morality  of  the  common 
life)  laid  bare. 

That  view  of  English  life  so  freezes  me  that  I 
lie  back  under  my  umbrella  and  thank  God  for  the 
Italian  sun. 

Has  it  always  been  so  in  England?  I  think  not. 
Garrick  was  a  self-respecting,  if  a  conceited,  indi- 
vidual. He  believed  in  his  work  and  he  had  some 
dramatic  sense.  The  theater  had  no  credit  then; 
even  his  genius  could  not  raise  it  to  the  level  of 
English  institutions.  But  his  genius  made  him  inde- 
pendent, and  still  the  theater  was  parasitic  upon  the 
Court.  Subsequently  the  English  Court,  which, 
never  since  Charles  II,  had  taken  any  genuine  in- 
terest in  it,  repudiated  the  theater  which  then  had 
healthily  to  struggle  for  its  existence.  I  fancy  that 
in  Copas — (Matilda's  uncle) — I  found  the  last 
genuine  survivor  of  the  race  of  mummers  of  which 
Henry  Irving  was  the  last  triumphant  example. 
They  strangled  the  theater  with  their  own  person- 
alities, for  only  by  the  strength  of  their  personali- 
ties could  they  force  themselves  upon  the  attention 
of  an  England  huddled  away  in  dark  houses,  grimly, 
tragically,  in  secrecy,  play-acting.  With  every  house 
a  playhouse,  how  can  the  theater  be  taken  seri- 
ously? With  so  much  engrossing  pretence  in  their 
homes,  men  have  no  need  of  professional  mummers; 
with  a  fully  developed  Nonconformist  conscience, 

359 


OLD   MOLE 

an  Englishman  can  be  his  own  playwright,  mummer, 
and  audience.  He  grudges  the  money  paid  to  pro- 
fessional actors,  despises  any  contrivance  they  can 
show  him,  spurns  the  whole  affair  as  a  light  thing, 
wantonness,  a  dangerous  toy  that  may  upset  the 
valuations  by  which  he  arrives  at  his  own  theatrical 
effect. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  Englishman's  home 
was  his  theater.  My  own  home  was  like  that:  year 
in,  year  out  there  was  a  tremendous  groveling  be- 
fore God,  and  a  sweaty  wrestling  with  the  Devil, 
and  a  barometrical  record  of  prowess  in  both  was 
kept.  Human  relations  sneaked  in  when  no  one  was 
looking,  took  the  stage  when  the  curtain  was  down; 
I  was  lucky,  and  on  the  whole  had  a  good  time  in 
spite  of  the  show,  which,  I  am  bound  to  say,  I 
thoroughly  enjoyed.  My  father  was  a  very  fine  man 
at  the  groveling  and  the  wrestling  (and  knew  it), 
but  in  his  human  relations  he  was  awkward,  heavy, 
and  blundering  in  the  very  genuine  tenderness  which 
he  could  not  always  escape; — and  I  think  he  knew 
that,  too,  poor  wretch. 

There  must  be  fewer  such  homes  now,  but  still  an 
enormous  number.  God  and  Devil  are  not  so  po- 
tent, but  the  habit  of  posturing  remains,  has  been 
handed  down  and  carried  over  into  human  relations 
—  (at  least  God  and  Devil  did  protect  us  from 
that!) — so  that  there  is  not  one,  not  the  most  inti- 
mate and  sacred,  but  is  made  subtly  the  occasion  of 
self-indulgence,  easy,  complacent,  and  devastating; 
the  epidemic  disease  consequent  on  the  airless  years 
from  the  Reform  Bill  to  the  South  African  War — 
(you  will  remember  the  histrionics  before,  during 
and  after  that  tragedy  of  two  nations).  The  old 
English  home — theatrical  and  oleographic — has 
been  destroyed  by  it,  and  I  rejoice  as  I  rejoice  to 
hear  that  the  Chinese  women  are  abandoning  the 

360 


APPENDIX 

folly  of  stunting  their  feet.  We  used  to  stunt  the 
soul,  the  affections,  human  passions.  Unbind  the 
China  woman's  feet  and  she  suffers  agonies,  so  that 
she  cannot  walk.  Thus  it  has  been  with  us;  we  have 
suffered  mortal  agonies;  we  have  been  saved  from 
madness  by  the  inherited  theatrical  habit,  by  which 
we  have  shuffled  through  the  human  relationships 
enforced  by  our  natural  necessities  and  the  incon- 
siderate insistence  upon  being  born  of  the  next  gen- 
eration. We  have  shuffled  through  them,  I  say,  and 
we  have  made  them  charming,  but  we  have  not  yet — 
shall  we  ever? — made  them  beautiful.  There  has 
been  no  true  song  in  our  hearts,  only  songs  without 
words  a  la  Mendelssohn,  nor  yet  a  full  music  in  our 
blood.  We  have  imitated  these  things,  from  bad 
models,  drawn  crude  sketches  of  them.  I,  for  in- 
stance, play-acted  myself  into  marriage;  when  it 
came  to  getting  out  of  it,  play-acting  was  of  no  avail, 
though  even  for  that  emergency,  as  you  know,  the 
English  game  has  its  rules.  ...  I  could  not  con- 
form to  them,  and  in  that  I  believe  I  shared  in  the 
general  experience  of  the  race.  I  was  pitchforked 
out  of  the  old  theatricality  into  the  new  and  found 
it  ineffective.  That  must  be  happening  every  day,  in 
thousands,  perhaps  in  millions,  of  cases.  ...  I  feel 
hopeful,  and  yet  unhappy,  too,  for  my  experience 
came  to  me  too  late.  I  have  been  able  to  discard; 
but,  for  the  new  life — vita  nuova — I  have  not  where- 
with to  grasp,  to  take  into  myself,  to  make  my  own. 
Even  here  on  this  island,  in  this  country  of  light,  I 
do  not  seem  to  myself  to  be  fully  alive,  but  am  an 
outsider,  a  spectator,  even  as  I  was  when  a  small 
boy,  and  I  shall  go  down  into  this  warm  earth  hardly 
riper  than  I  was  when  I  was  born,  nurtured  only  by 
one  genuine  experience  and  that  negative.  But  for 
that  I  am  thankful.  It  has  made  it  possible  for  me 
to  ruminate,  if  not  to  act,  to  rejoice  in  the  possession 

361 


OLD   MOLE 

of  my  uncomely  and  unwieldy  body,  to  be  content 
with  that  small  fragment  of  my  soul  which  I  have 
mastered. 

(It  is  really  delightful  to  be  writing  to  you  again. 
It  brings  you  before  me,  as  a  boy,  a  little  piping 
boy;  as  a  posturing  and  conceited  youth — do  you 
remember  the  cruel  snub  inflicted  on  you  by  Tallien, 
the  French  master?  I  had  sent  you  to  him  with  a 
message,  and  he  said:  uTell  Mr.  Beenham  I  will 
take  no  message  from  his  conceited  puppy."  You ! 
A  prefect! — as  a  heated  and  quite  too  Stendhalian 
young  man.     It  is  charming.) 

But  I  am  rueful  when  I  reflect  that  I  solved  my 
difficulty,  which,  after  all,  was  a  portion  of  the  Eng- 
lish difficulty,  by  leaving  England.  I  should  have 
stayed;  fought  it  out;  wrestled  through  with  it  until 
the  three  of  us  were  properly  and  in  all  eyes  estab- 
lished in  that  new  relation  to  which  inevitably  we 
should  have  come.  I  was  too  old.  I  was  too  much 
under  the  habit  of  thinking  of  consequences;  too 
English,  too  theatrical  to  believe  that  life  does  not 
deal  in  neat  and  finished  endings.  I  could  see  noth- 
ing before  me  but  the  ugly  conventional  way  of 
throwing  mud  at  the  woman  and  bringing  you  to  an 
unjust  and  undeserved  ruin,  or  the  way  most  pleas- 
ing to  my  sentimentality,  of  withdrawing  from  the 
scene  and  leaving  you  to  make  the  best  of  it;  as,  no 
doubt,  you  have  done,  since  you  are  both  successful 
personages  and  well  in  the  limelight,  and  able  to  go 
triumphantly  from  honeymoon  to  honeymoon. 

Are  there  children?    I  hope  there  are  children! 

And  there  begins  my  real  difficulty.  Not  that  I 
care  about  legitimacy.  No  reasonable  child  will  ask 
more  than  to  be  conceived  in  a  healthy  body,  born 
in  a  clean  atmosphere,  and  bred  in  a  decently  or- 
dered home.  But  if  there  are  children  you  should 
not  be  separated.    Perhaps  you  are  not.    Perhaps  I 

3^2 


APPENDIX 

have  been  long  enough  absent  for  your  world  to 
forget  my  existence.  But  I  have  my  doubts.  I  too 
much  dread  the  English  atmosphere  not  to  feel  that 
it  must  have  been  too  strong  for  you,  and  you  will 
have  accepted  your  parts  in  the  play. 

But,  if  there  are  children,  there  should  be  no  play- 
acting in  their  immediate  surroundings,  in  the  love 
that  brought  them  into  being. 

How  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  my  marionettes ! 
We  should  then  have  an  emotional  meeting  point. 
As  it  is,  I  seem  to  be  dancing  round  and  round  you 
almost  as  agilely  as  though  I  were  with  you  in  Eng- 
land, in  the  thick  of  polite  London.  That  surely  is 
what  you  need,  on  your  thickly  populated  island,  a 
point  at  which  the  lower  streams  of  thought  can 
converge,  so  that  your  existence  may  more  resemble 
a  noble  estuary  than  a  swampy  delta. 

You  will  see  that  I  am  sane  enough  to  be  thinking 
more  of  your  (possibly  non-existent)  children  than 
of  you.  There  are  two  clear  ideas  in  my  head,  and 
they  desire  each  other  in  marriage — the  idea  of  chil- 
dren and  the  idea  of  the  theater.  But,  alas!  I  fear 
it  is  beyond  me  to  bring  them  together.  I  cannot 
reach  beyond  my  marionettes,  which  are,  after  all, 
only  the  working  models  of  the  theater  I  should  like 
to  conceive,  and,  having  conceived,  to  create  and  set 
down  in  England  as  a  reproach  to  the  clumsy  senti- 
mental play-acting  of  English  life.  That  would,  I 
believe,  more  powerfully  than  any  other  instrument, 
quell  the  disease.  If  you  had  a  theater  which  was  a 
place  of  art  it  would  lead  you  on  to  life,  and  you 
would  presently  discard  the  sham  morals,  imitation 
art,  false  emotions,  and  tortuous  thoughts  with  which 
you  now  defend  yourselves  against  it. 

I  have  written  much  under  my  umbrella.  I  hope 
I  have  said  something.  At  least,  with  this,  I  shake 
you  by  the  hand  and  we  three  puppets  dance  on 

363 


OLD    MOLE 

through  the  merry  burlesque  which  our  modern  life 
will  seem  to  be  to  the  wiser  and  healthier  genera- 
tions who  shall  come  after  us. 

The  old  are  supposed  to  be  in  a  position  to  advise 
the  young.  I  have  learned  through  you,  and  yet  I 
may  give  you  this  counsel:  "If  ever  you  find  your- 
self faced  with  a  risk,  take  it."  Love,  I  conclude, 
is  a  voyager,  and  it  is  our  privilege  to  travel  with 
him ;  but,  if  we  stay  too  long  in  the  inn  of  habit,  we 
lose  his  company  and  are  undone. 

tYours  affectionately, 

H.  J.  Beenham. 


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